Sort of how it's easier to create animated gifs in photoshop (I think). Here is a simple flash animation created in Illustrator, you can also create hotspots (when the mouse is passed over the illustration it can link to other pages/sites) in illustrator which makes it even better. So you can create simple flash content without opening up flash.
Obviously, for more dynamic content you definitely want to stick with flash because of its scripting capabilities.

Tags: Flash, Illustrator, Animation