And let us not forgot the very understandable confusion when the first portion of a direct flight is delayed and the second portion (on different equipment) leaves without connecting passengers. I'm sure that a number of passengers have booked DL17 from ATL-SYD only to miss the LAX-SYD portion due to weather delays in ATL. I have an award ticket from MCO-LAX-SYD that I need to modify to go through ATL because of a schedule change in the MCO-LAX flight, and if I wasn't an informed FlyerTalker, I would probably switch to DL17 and think that I wouldn't have any problem with delays out of Atlanta. I shudder to think what happens to all of those occasional flyers who are "duped" into booking these direct routings with equipment changes.

Is there any reason why Delta doesn't just make DL17 operate on the 772 the whole way? Do most "direct" flights follow this pattern of changing planes?