The high-tech Triangle has a lot of connections, pun intended, in the San Francisco Bay area, the southern part of which was long ago dubbed Silicon Valley. So it’s often necessary for Triangle companies to send their folks to visit their corporate brothers, sisters, subsidiaries or home offices in that area. But as one owner of a startup based in San Francisco said, he liked to have employees from Raleigh come out to the business, “but the big problem has been just how to get them here.”

United Airlines, responding to long-standing requests to airlines from bi-coastal businesses, is now going to get them there, if they wish, on a daily, nonstop flight leaving RDU about 7 a.m. and getting to San Francisco at 10 a.m. West Coast time. A return flight will depart San Francisco at 1 p.m. Pacific and get to RDU at 9 p.m. Eastern.

Long-distance nonstop flights are a kind of business merit badges for a community, affirming growth and significance.