Depending on where air travelers live and where they want to go, hopping from city to city on connecting flights may be the only way to get there.
Yet the number of direct flights from Denver hasn’t really changed much, based on limited data and interviews.
In fact, some airlines have added nonstops to popular destinations.
“There are some cities where we may operate fewer flights, and some might have no service, while we may have increased the number of flights per day to others,” said Rahsaan Johnson, spokesman for United Airlines. “Filling the airplanes is what makes it work.”
Still, travelers do love nonstop flights, loathing the inconvenience and greater likelihood of delays with connecting flights.
“I avoid connecting flights like the plague,” said Javier Damien, who tapped on his laptop while waiting at Denver International Airport last week for a flight to Newark, N.J. He said he’d pay up to $200 more for a nonstop.
Carol Gregory of Frisco, headed that day to a second home in Phoenix, said she doesn’t even look at connecting flights when booking online.
Despite the perception that the number of connecting flights is on the rise, the airlines say otherwise.
When DIA opened in 1995, United and United Express had 445 daily departures to 99 cities, Johnson said. By March 2005 there were 403 daily departure to 97 cities.
This month: 408 daily departures to 113 cities.
“There is a much bigger number of choices to destinations that you can reach nonstop than ever before,” Johnson said of Denver and other major cities that serve as airline hubs.
AirTran Airways, which flies from Denver to Milwaukee and Atlanta — “and then to the world,” spokesman Christopher White says — had 500 daily flights to 45 cities in July 2004. This summer the airline forecasts 750 daily flights to 61 cities.
“In our route-making decisions, we look at whether the route can sustain nonstop flights,” White said.
There are advantages to the airline for a nonstop flight: fewer landing fees, using less fuel and more efficient use of flight time, White said.
Necessary connections
Sometimes connectors are necessary to ensure a location retains service.
“We do what makes economic sense for the size of the market,” American Airlines spokesman Tim Smith said. Airlines “aren’t consciously saying, ‘Let’s have more connecting flights.’ The alternative to a connecting flight would be no service at all.”
Where a decade ago there was no service between cities such as Bismarck, N.D., and Corpus Christi, Texas, there is today — but it might take several flights to get there.
American Airlines’ rule of thumb for its hubs is “two-thirds of the people who step on a airplane are making a connection. That hasn’t changed measurably over the years,” Smith said.
Rising fuel costs have stirred the pot. It’s actually cheaper to fly nonstop because connecting flights consume more fuel in takeoffs, landings and distance flown.
Fuel costs in 2006 made connecting a flight $12 more expensive to offer, according to a working paper by Steven Berry of Yale University and Panle Jia of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
And nonstop flights aren’t necessarily more expensive than connecting flights as they once were, says Rick Seaney, chief executive of .
Taxes and fees alone — such as the 9/11 security tax, a segment tax and passenger facility fee — will cost $21 for a typical nonstop flight compared with $42 for a flight with connections, Seaney said.
Nevertheless, nonstops aren’t available in some markets as airlines funnel passengers to their hubs to improve revenues by seating more on a plane.
Residents of some smaller cities who once enjoyed nonstop service have been losing that option slowly, particularly last year when the airline industry saw a 15 percent to 18 percent reduction in its capacity — the size of an airline’s fleet and the number of routes it serves.
As flights were whittled, airlines worked to fill the planes that remain.
“The loss has been smaller cities,” Seaney said. “If you’re not in the top 25 (largest cities), you’re going to connect.”
Fuel to the ire
Even Kevin Maguire, chief executive of the National Business Travel Association, is among those with little choice but to take connecting flights.
He frequently jets out of Austin, Texas, each month on behalf of the association, which represents 4,000 business-travel managers.
Nonstops from Austin have sagged, forcing him to fly to Dallas-Fort Worth or Houston to grab another flight.
“I’m delayed almost every time I travel,” Maguire said.
Passengers aren’t enamored with air travel, Seaney said, and a connecting flight makes them less so.
“They have to take off their shoes and dance through dust, they have to unpack their stuff, and they have to deal with the gate police on the size of their carry-ons,” Seaney said.
Christian McBride, in Denver last week to play a jazz gig at the Paramount Theatre, has endured his share of connecting flights.
But he hasn’t noticed that there are more of them than before. What’s changed is being able to catch the connector.
“Schedules aren’t kept as diligently,” he said. “It’s almost commonplace to be late, and you’re lucky to make a connection.”
Ann Schrader: 303-954-1967 or aschrader@denverpost.com
