DCA to/from MSP - Why so many "Direct"?
 

Noticed something strange while waiting form my flight out of MSP last week - the majority of flights showing on th monitor as going to ORD continued on as "direct" flights to DCA. It looks like the schedule has shifted, but this week 9 of the DCA to MSP flights are 'direct". Looks like the schedule shifts after this week and most of the direct flights are gone. Was glad to be flying into IAD rather than lose the segment and miles.

Is this normal to have so many "direct" flights on a city pair? Why do this - is there some competitive reason? I was trying to think of some reason why UA might be trying to boost their MSP-DCA traffic for a short period of time (by making people think they were going to be on one airplane) but couldn't come up with anything.

It would be nice if they could make at least one of those direct flights non-stop between DCA and MSP!

a n/s wouldn't make much sense.

Back in the day these were two of the 4 "Business One" (was that the name) destinations...at the gate there were refreshments, power points and the gates were close to security at ORD and dedicated...reminiscing...NW at that point had a gate buffet that you packed up and took aboard their ORD-MSP flights...

It was Business One - they have finally killed that off - no more bonus miles for delays - flight numbers changing (in June, a few flights out of DCA no longer start with 6xx) - and for a while no more "Business One" on the boarding pass. One night last year at ORD I watched as multiple people tried to board on the red carpet because they thought their boarding passes had them in Business Class.

I was expecting a Larry Craig joke!

All the "over 1,250 miles" DCA slots are allocated (UA has 2 slots which are in use for 1x DEN RT) but DCA-MSP seems to be comfortably under that limit.

DCA-ORD = 612 and
ORD-MSP = 334

This totals 946, comfortable within the 1,250 rule. I guess UA is happier with more frequently flights to ORD and then transferring the pax to ORD-MSP (as well as a million other destinations). I wonder if DCA-MSP would have enough traffic to justify a non-stop flight. (A quick count looks like NW has a corner on this market and flies 8 RTs a day).

some of the NWA traffic is international heading to the Pacific.

United wouldn't get that traffic if it flew nonstop to MSP, because it has the choice of its own flghts from Dulles, or flights thru ord.

As a result United would never likely be able to sustain the MSP schedule NW has