Originally Posted by
Orion
If it is a through flight now I bet it won't stay that way for more than a month or two. Just my experience. Years ago I used to hunt for through flights for travel with an elderly relative. Almost none of them panned out. Even when the flight number stayed the same we were usually hit with an unscheduled equipment change. I was almost always credited with separate segments.
The fact that you are hit with an equipment change has nothing to do with the fact that it's still a "direct" flight. Direct flight only means that a particular flight has the same flight number from destination a to z (with potentially many scheduled stops in between -- e.g. a milk run SEA-BOI-BZN-FAR-MSP).
NW and most other carriers are notorious for direct flights that still require equipment changes. You won't know until you get to the connection city whether you are changing equipment.
The "direct" flight problem comes in when you talk about mileage & segment posting.
-RM