United launches direct flights between Detroit and San Francisco

Eric D. Lawrence | Detroit Free Press

More direct flights to San Francisco are on tap at Detroit Metro Airport.

United Airlines is launching daily nonstop flight service to the California city today.

United will provide its direct flights as evening departures from Detroit to San Francisco International Airport and morning departures to Detroit from San Francisco on its Airbus A319 aircraft, according to a news release from Metro Airport.

An airport official has credited the increasing connections between Detroit's automakers and Silicon Valley with boosting the demand for air connections between the two cities.

“We are seeing increased development of autonomous vehicle applications expanding ties between Detroit’s automotive engineering base and the technology centers around San Francisco,” Wayne County Airport Authority Director of Air Service Development Joe Cambron said in a release last year. “This trend towards greater integration of technology and manufacturing is increasing the need for additional service between the Motor City and Silicon Valley.”

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Delta Air Lines also offers direct flights to and from San Francisco, but with more than 350,000 passengers traveling between the cities each year, San Francisco "was the largest without at least a second carrier providing nonstop service," said the release, citing data from the International Air Transport Association.

Contact Eric D. Lawrence: elawrence@freepress.com. Follow him on Twitter: @_ericdlawrence.