As an educated travel professional, understanding the ins and outs of air—even if you don’t personally book the flights—is essential to ensuring your client’s vacation begins and ends incredibly well.
Would you like to learn how to avoid last-minute air travel issues and to shift from reactive to proactive client support? Don’t miss the PEP Talk From Chaos to Control: Anticipating Air Travel Challenges in Real Time, presented March 6 at 12:00 pm (ET) by one of our Professional Educators Program (PEP) members, Lary Néron – Air Travel Expert and Founder of Airfare Consultant and AirLab. Join this fast-paced session to learn four game-changing principles and explore tools to help you anticipate and resolve air travel disruptions, ensuring stress-free, seamless journeys for even the most demanding clients.
One area the TRIPKIT program (designed for those new to the industry) covers in depth is air travel. If you are a leisure agent, this might be an area you don’t focus on much; on the other hand, if you handle corporate travel, air is the holy grail. While some can speak in fluent code (e.g., “I logged into the GDS and xld the last leg from BOS to MSP”), most simply need to understand the terminology used by travel professionals when discussing air travel. For example, what is the difference between types of flights and types of trips?
Types of Flights
For most people traveling by air, the only things that typically matter is that their flight is safe, on time, and as fast and simple as possible. Its simplicity depends on the stops. And there are different kinds of stops.
- A connection is a stop where a passenger switches to another plane.
- A stopover is a planned break in the journey. For domestic flights, a stopover lasts over four hours, and for international flights, it’s over 24 hours—unless the airline doesn’t have a flight available sooner. Some airlines provide the option to have longer stopovers without incurring any additional cost. This was created to bolster local tourism. IcelandAir was one of the first airlines to offer this service, providing customers the opportunity to experience Iceland for up to three days.
Travelers can take three types of one-way flights based on the stops.
- A nonstop flight has no stops between the departure and destination.
- A connecting flight has a stop in which passengers change planes.
- A direct flight (also called a through flight) makes one or more stops, but passengers usually stay on the same plane.
It is important that travel professionals communicate to clients if a flight is nonstop, direct, or requires a connection. For example, if clients taking a direct flight from LAX to PVD—with a stop in PHX—get off the plane at the stop, they might not be allowed to reboard.
Types of Trips
There are four main types of trips.
- A one-way trip is a journey that starts in one city and ends in another without a return to the original departure point. It may include a single flight or multiple flights with layovers or plane changes along the way.
- A round trip is a journey that starts in one city, travels to another, and then returns to the original city using the same route.
- A circle trip is similar to a round trip but with a different route on the way back. It includes two or more stopovers and ends at the starting city.
- An open-jaw trip is a round trip in which either:
—the return flight goes to a city different from the starting point or
—the return flight starts from a different city than the original destination.
Example: Fly from Seattle to Boston, drive to New York, and fly back to Seattle from New York. - A double open-jaw trip is a variation of the open-jaw trip with different airports at both ends. For example, fly from Oakland to LaGuardia and return from Newark to San Francisco.
As you can see, air can be complex. Whether or not you sell much air, it is important to have a basic understanding of what it all means. In general, we advise agents to avoid the overuse of industry jargon. However, the use of proper and specific industry terms is critical when explaining important distinctions like these to your clients or colleagues alike.
