Seeking Truth in Air Advertising : Flights: Airlines are potentially misleading passengers when they refer to trips with one or more stops on the same plane as being <i> direct</i> .

One of the perennial sources of confusion for travelers is the term direct flights. Nonstop and connecting flights are easy to figure out, but what exactly does direct mean?

In short, a direct flight takes passengers to their destination without changing planes, though there could be one or more stops at airports along the way. A connecting flight occurs when passengers switch planes during a stop.

But shouldn’t consumers expect a direct flight to mean the same thing as a nonstop flight?

After all, in everyday life, the term direct is normally used to describe proceeding someplace without any intervening stops, i.e., when someone suggests going directly from home to the grocery store, they probably aren’t planning to stop at the post office first.

Though many airline industry officials concede that the term direct flight is potentially misleading, the expression remains in use. And some consumers continue to be confused.

Passengers have mistakenly booked direct flights, while assuming that they were getting nonstop flights. As a result, connecting flights at the final destinations have been missed due to stops along the way, and travel plans have often needed revision.

It is the responsibility of the airline or travel agent booking a flight to explain to consumers when there are stops or connecting flights before reaching the final destination. However, the booking agent may not always take the time to do that. And the end result can be frustration for unaware consumers.

And some travel agents are frustrated as well.

“I had passengers on a Rome-New York City-Dallas itinerary on what was listed as a direct flight with just one flight number,” said Ada Brown, president of Seaside Travel House in Long Beach and head of the Southern California chapter of the American Society of Travel Agents.

“I told them they had to change planes in New York, but they and I assumed that since both legs of the overall flight had the same flight number, they couldn’t miss the flight to Dallas from New York.

“But it doesn’t have to work that way on such a fictitious direct flight listing. The flight from Rome was delayed, and the flight from New York took off without my clients.”

According to Brown, ASTA has long recommended that this deceptive way of listing flights--on the computer reservations terminals that virtually all travel agents and airlines use--be abolished.

“If it’s a connecting flight, why not just list it that way instead of pretending that it’s a direct flight?” she said. “ As it is, passengers frequently confuse nonstop flights with direct flights.”

Some airlines agree. American Airlines has petitioned the U.S. Department of Transportation to issue a rule forbidding the practice of listing international flights as direct when they involve a change of planes. A number of other carriers, including British Airways and Lufthansa, also support such a step.

American charged that passengers may not understand that they are traveling on connecting flights because of the way such flights are advertised, listed on computer reservations systems and then ticketed.

For some airlines, the practice is a way to compensate for not having the route structure within the United States to deliver passengers onto their international flights.

American, which has a strong domestic route structure and a growing number of international flights, stands to benefit if the DOT cracks down on this practice.

A misleading flight listing is one of the issues in an ongoing court case in which a widow is suing TWA for the wrongful death of her husband. Her suit alleges that she thought she was buying a nonstop New York City-Athens ticket for her husband, who was traveling by himself, and that while his ticket didn’t indicate any connections, in fact, the flight--on a Boeing 747--was scheduled to stop in Rome and change to a Boeing 727 before continuing on to Athens.

According to the suit, a terrorist attack at the Rome airport on Dec. 27, 1985, caused the 747 to land at an isolated area of the airport.

Passengers then had to sit in the jet for a couple of hours without air conditioning before finally changing planes. The husband died from a heart attack a day later, and the suit claims that his unanticipated landing in Rome and subsequent trauma and discomfort were primary factors in his death.