nd2010

I travel frequently between Las Vegas and Philadelphia. I noticed that I'd prefer a connecting flight to a direct flight, especially when going westbound. I prefer if the connecting city is in the middle of the country like DFW or ORD or DEN
Not just because I get more frequent flier miles and segments. I prefer getting up and walking around, sometimes getting a meal at the connecting airport.

tjl

You have not had misconnect or other issues that are a higher risk with connecting flights than nonstop flights?

The extra hours of travel time are not a problem?

darthbimmer

Having a stop in the middle of a long trip does make the travel more comfortable. The primary tradeoff, of course, is time. (Misconnecting risk is a factor, too, as tjl points out above.) Even an efficient stop adds 90 minutes to the journey. LAS/PHL is only about 4.5 hours nonstop.... For that length flight I'd usually prefer to fly nonstop and enjoy those 90 extra minutes not traveling rather than in the middle of it.

GadgetFreak

I often did as well. I think what changed my mind was a bad miscalculation. It was somewhere in Asia, I think NRT, and I decided to break up the flight by stopping in LAX. Problem is that to LAX is only two and a half hours or so shorter than JFK, where I live. But in LAX I have a layover plus another 5 hour or so flight remaining to get back to JFK.

mandolino

In economy from ICN to Sydney or Perth, lately I've been taking 2x daytime flights on Air Asia and sleeping overnight in the Sama Sama airside KLIA2.

Very relaxing and quite economical.

lhrsfo

For UA status purposes, I often try to add a LAX-SFO or other short connection, rather than a connection which breaks up the middle of a flight - a) it usually adds some overall distance and b) I benefit from the 500 mile minimum. But it is painful to do it.

RAAng

Oh hell no!!! This is just me, but I am adamant about nonstop. The HOURS you have to add to the trip just to ensure making the connection, the added opportunity for them to lose luggage? The worry about making the connection? Sprinting though airports? Not for me. I don't do the points/miles thing, so I wouldn't gain there by making a pit stop. My luggage and I get on the plane and we don't want to get off until we are where we are going. Then there's the customs issue if you come from abroad and touch down in the US but then have to connect to your home airport. I'd rather spend 90 minutes getting through customs at home than knowing I'm standing there in line, seething, while my outbound is revving its engines on the tarmac. (No longer an issue, I got Global Entry after the 90 minutes of customs hell at PHL this summer). I'd limo to JFK or Newark to get an international non-stop if I couldn't get it in Philadelphia. That's just me.

CPRich

I do it when travelling to India. I like stopping in Dubai for a few hours, rather than a direct flight (on an inferior carrier, which also is a factor). I would never think of doing it on a flight within the US.

pinniped

The natural extension of this logic is to just drive from Vegas to Philly. Then you can walk around whenever you like!!

As for me, when I was young I liked creating weird itins to maximize miles and segments. I was never a pure mileage runner (e.g., flying for no purpose other than miles), but if I was flying from North America to Europe for fun, I'd find the most convoluted way I could legally get there for a given fare. Time meant little.

In 2017: time means a lot more, the miles and segments mean a lot less. I tend to sort trips on shortest-duration and look for my airline and routing preferences within that. If there is a nonstop at all, I'm almost certain to take it. I've even opted for a short Spirit (gasp!) nonstop over real airlines with connections.

Funny that CPRich mentions Dubai and India, because that's the one exception I've made this year myself. I chose to spend a night in Dubai over a shorter itin that would have required a domestic flight in India. Flying to HYD, it was nice to have EK business class all the way there, as opposed to AI's crappy J product to DEL and then a 737 from there. One night in a hotel was fine with me.

tjl

Painful in that UA LAX-SFO flights are some of the most notoriously risky for delays?

aquamarinesteph

If I am traveling on my own, I like connecting flights. It breaks up the trip. If I am flying with Mr. Aquamarine, we take the fewest number of connecting flights possible due to his ear issues on some smaller planes.

CPRich

I suspect there's a global maximum point on the non-monotonic utility curve between those extremes

And yes, EK vs. AI is exactly the quality trade-off I was also avoiding.

Duke787

I agree with the sentiment for TPAC (just did RDU - ORD - NRT - SYD instead of RDU - DFW - SYD to break it up, well that and the longer way was PE Y).

For domestic or most TATL though I prefer non-stop or minimized connections to get there faster.

rsqrott

I always prefer the "one take off, one landing" direct flight. I make frequent trips to BNA and never thought to consider a connection for the 2 1/2 hour flight from LGA.
However, as a result of the construction and traffic nightmare that is now LGA I decided to try flying out of a local airport with a connecting flight back in September and have never looked back (HPN to ATL, then ATL to BNA).

I would need to leave at least 3 hours prior to flying out of LGA due to the traffic and my flight out of LGA was delayed for departure nearly every single time.

Contrasting that with HPN where it's a smaller airport, quicker security (even with GE) and even factoring in the time for the connection I'm still taking roughly the same time to make the trip from door to door. Plus less stress and aggravation (at least so far). I've made the trip out of HPN 4 times since September and I think that the ability of flying out of HPN has saved my sanity.

Maybe I've just been lucky so far but last night, I was sitting in terminal B at BNA and hearing the announcement that x Delta flight to LGA was cancelled, all later flights were full and the next available flights were the following day. My flight to ATL went off fine and though my connection to HPN was delayed for an hour it did happen and I did make it home last night.

So I'm with you OP. I still don't like the idea of a connection for a long haul if I can avoid it but who knows?

GadgetFreak

When I’ve had time I have broken up JFK-LAX-SYD. The normal connection leaves JFK pretty late to catch the evening departure for SYD. Once I took a morning flight to LAX then checked into an airport hotel for 5 or 6 hours sleep before leaving for SYD.

Another time we intentionally took an extra connection was when we found that AMS-LHR-LUN-CPT-LHR-AMS on BA in business cost as much as the same flight leaving directly from LHR in coach. In order to make sure we didn’t miss the connection in AMS (we were coming from the US) we bolted a few extra days in AMS onto each end of the trip and got to see AMS as well as parts of Africa.