I know some of you are airplane buffs, so you may want to chime in on this question.

What is a non-stop flight in today's hub and spoke world?

At first I would say any flight without stopping, but when I try to put it in the context of the following article, the lines get fuzzy.
Continental adding 50 new flights, 700 jobs at Hopkins

*Also note Nasa/Glenn in the picture. Hopefully the new Nasa expansion plans (not part of this story) include paint for the roof.

Anyway, they say they are adding 50 new flights, 20 non-stop. My guess is that it is all press release language.

If you add a non-stop flight destination, and that destination has 5 other connections. Then in essence, you still have added 1 new flight with multiple destination possibilities. The other 5 may already have existed, but maybe you just removed one hop.

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Numbers are not case sensitive. (me)

I'm not sure what your beef is. The flights in question are non-stop from Cleveland to the respective destination.

If you're flying from some other place, you may need to connect in Cleveland if there's no direct flight... but that's not what's being claimed. Likewise if the destination city is not your final destination, you'll need to connect.

Certainly these new flights are non-stops for anybody living in or around Cleveland, if they're going to one of those destinations; and the article is on a WKYC (Cleveland) web site.

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Relight the Firefly!

"It is quite clear that Occam's razor does not sharpen in your pyramid." (Nicolas)

"Still, a man hears what he wants to hear and disregards the rest." (Paul Simon)

No; I'm not questioning the non-stops, I am questioning the other flights. How can they be considered "added" flights because the capability is at the destination of the first hop?

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Numbers are not case sensitive. (me)

Never been on a non-stop flight. They've always landed, . . . eventually.

But seriously, want to talk about hard-core air travel. When I had free flight benefits, I once took 11 flights in 7 days. When it was over, I really was at a loss for what day of the week it was.

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Don of Borg - Cool, Calm, Collective.

"Within the next generation I believe that the world's leaders will discover that infant conditioning and narco-hypnosis are more efficient, as instruments of government, than clubs and prisons, and that the lust for power can be just as completely satisfied by suggesting people into loving their servitude as by flogging them and kicking them into obedience." -- Aldous Huxley

I think if you are flying from New York to, say, Orlando, and you switch planes in D.C. it would not count, but if you just stop to refuel the plane in D.C., never disembark and take off in the same plane it is non-stop.

This year, I had two August 4ths, seperated by only five hours of sleep:
Woke up on August 4th 2007 at 4:30 AM in a Cairns (Oz) hotel room. Went to the airport, ate breakfast and boarded five hour flight to Sydney. Disembarked in Sydney, ate lunch, purchased Cosmos magazine and enjoyed a layover. Took off at 2:00 PM on Quantas International. Read magazine, ate dinner, watched Apollo 13, cried at the end like I always do, listened to meditation channel on headphones, fell asleep.
Woke up five hours later, on August 4, and landed in Los Angles. Boarded connecting Delta flight to Salt Lake City. Tried to catch more sleep but couldn't. Landed in Salt Lake, plane refueled, took off again for New York. Too airsick to sleep, too tired to watch another movie or read, I leaned my head on the back of the next seat and thought of home for what must have been four more hours. Landed in New York City at midnight, met my mother at baggage claim, hugged her, finally slept and woke up- on August 5th.
So, yes, Mr. Reporter, I do remember where I was on the day Pheonix launched.

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I don't care which rocket you use, whichever one you pick, I'll like it, I swear.
"If you think the LHC will create black holes, you might as well believe Hobbits are at the bottom of your garden."- Dr. Mike Inglis
Rovers forever! - ToSeek

I don't understand the phrase after "because" in this question.

Continental flies from Cleveland to San Diego. Those flights stop in Denver (I'm presuming), but the plane then continues on to San Diego with no change in flight number. That's a direct flight, but it's not non-stop.

Continental is going to fly those flights (Cleveland to San Diego via Denver) more often than they do now - maybe, for example, three flights a day instead of only one.

That's what most (if not all) of those fifty new flights are. They're not new destinations and they're not non-stop. But if you want to fly from Cleveland to San Diego on Continental, you now have more options to do so than you did before. It's added capacity.

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SeanF

"Ask to understand, but don't challenge unless you have the knowledge."--NEOWatcher

The contents of this post are ©2009 by SeanF and may not be copied or retransmitted in any form without the express written consent of SeanF

The more I think about it, the more the words destinations, and flights get muddled in my head.
It's just that "non-stop" in the context of a single airport's capacity is making my head spin.

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Numbers are not case sensitive. (me)

I'm thinking a non-stop flight would be the shortest vacation one could possibly take.
"We are now approaching our destination. Since this flight is non-stop, we will circle around and head back."

Of course, if you want to get technical, it could be the longest trip one might ever take, as not-stopping would imply never being able to land.

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I'm like one of those idiot savants...well, except for the savant part.
"In order to increase awareness of the homeless, security have been given binoculars."

It's the non-start flights that get me grumpy.

All it means is that if the flight shuttles between two terminals without intermediate stops, it's called non-stop. It's the difference between A {- -} B and A -} C -} B.

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And you, to whom adversity has dealt the final blow
With smiling [faces] lyin' to ye' everywhere ye' go
Turn to, and put out all your strength of arm and heart and brain
And like the Mary Ellen Carter, rise again.

In a true non-stop, you need to run alongside and jump, just like a hobo and a boxcar.

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Numbers are not case sensitive. (me)

In a true non-stop, you need to run alongside and jump, just like a hobo and a boxcar. Just remember, only one carry-on bindle per hobo, please.

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I'm like one of those idiot savants...well, except for the savant part.
"In order to increase awareness of the homeless, security have been given binoculars."

Tuck and roll baby, tuck and rollllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllll .

I would definitely ask them to at least use a grass airstrip.

Maybe they could just bring it down to about 2000', reduce airspeed to 200 or 300 mph, and let me out the back door.

EDIT: After giving me a briefcase full of cash of course.

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Don of Borg - Cool, Calm, Collective.

"Within the next generation I believe that the world's leaders will discover that infant conditioning and narco-hypnosis are more efficient, as instruments of government, than clubs and prisons, and that the lust for power can be just as completely satisfied by suggesting people into loving their servitude as by flogging them and kicking them into obedience." -- Aldous Huxley

A 727 of course...

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Numbers are not case sensitive. (me)

Generally, it's one take-off, and one landing...

Having lived overseas, for me a non-stop flight is a pretty arduous 8 to 13 hour affair involving not sleeping, changing upwards of 10 time zones at a pop.

The only true non-stop flight I had was an out-and-back that last 26 hours a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away.

Just because we could.

Ugh.

At least we began and ended in the same time zone...

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If I set the budget, we'd have Ares and more. Unfortunately, I don't set the budget, and Ares is just too expensive and too far out for us to accomplish our goals within the budget we were given.

If we halt the ISS, all versions of Ares, and transport Orion and Altair aboard DIRECTv3's Jupiter family of Shuttle-Derived Launch Vehicles, we just might make it back to the Moon by 2020.