Airline Flight Explanations In Plain English
Nonstop flight: You board the flight in your origin City A
and disembark in your destination City B, with no stops along the way.
Direct flight: Staying on the same plane, you board your flight
in City A, and make stops along the way before reaching your final
destination. Think of it like a train trip. You start in New York, end
up in Boston, and make stops along the way.
Connecting flight: You board one flight and land in a
non-destination city, where you then change aircraft and fly to your
final destination (or sometimes another connecting city).
Minimum Connection Time: Airports worldwide have established
Minimum Connection Times (MCT) for arriving airline passengers in
transit to a connecting flight. The time is based on how long it will
take for arriving luggage to be transferred and for an arriving
passenger to disembark, walk to the connecting airline and board the
next flight.
MCT's between the same airlines are usually shorter than between
different airlines, and domestic connection times are less than
international ones. For the times you've wondered why you weren't
booked on earlier connecting flight, it's likely it did not meet the
MCT requirements.
Restricted and Unrestricted Fares: Fares comes in two sizes:
restricted and unrestricted. The cost of a ticket and flexibility of
its rules are usually inversely proportional. The more fare
restrictions applied, the lower the fare is in most cases. The fewer
strings attached, the higher the cost of travel is in most cases.
Lower-priced restricted tickets usually require a 7- to 14-day advance
purchase plus a Saturday night stay, and are nonrefundable.
Unrestricted tickets can be purchased any time that space is
available, and refunded if cancelled.
Such flexibility comes at a higher price. For example: At the time of
this writing, a roundtrip Boston-Chicago fare requiring a 7-day
advance purchase (with Saturday night stay) was $267. The same
itinerary booked only three days before departure ran $467.
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About the Author:
K Watkins is a free lance writer and submits articles to us all
about his travels.
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