4 ms·

Maybe I can’t read, but the article talks a lot about the “fifth freedom”, but doesn’t explicitly tell you what it is. There’s a short little section that go “

Maybe I can’t read, but the article talks a lot about the “fifth freedom”, but doesn’t explicitly tell you what it is. There’s a short little section that go “some airlines are allowed to do this strange thing, especially if a fuel stop is involved”. But it doesn’t explicitly say what the fifth freedom is, just alludes to it.

appleflaxen 7y ago
Spot on; this is just such sloppy reporting. It also reads like it was written by the airlines involved in order to generate interest; a la PGs "submarine" blog post.
- jagermo 7y ago
  They also compare prices to Milan with Rome. Milan is about 600 km more north than Rome, its about a 6 hour drive if everything works out. Nobody who wants to go to Rome would fly to Milan.
  - rz2k 7y ago
    After high school I went to visit friends on the Adriatic coast of Italy, then we went to the Aeolian Islands (we summited Stromboli which may not be allowed anymore). Anyway, I had very little money so I took a flight that was an option to fly from the "west coast of the US" to "western Europe". I waited for a nearby US departure since, our ground transportation is difficult, but flew into Paris, then took an overnight train to Bologna. When I left, I departed from Milan. The difficult part was that the shady company organizing the tickets told me the wrong Milan airport, but getting to Milan is easy. You could even take a train from Messina, since the train itself gets on the ferry from Sicily to the Italian peninsula. From Rome, Milan is only a three hour train ride with spacious seating and large windows to watch the scenery roll by. If you're on a tight budget with a flexible schedule, you can go a pretty long distance by train before it seems like any inconvenience at all.
darrenf 7y ago
Fifth freedom is the right for an airline to carry revenue traffic between two countries, neither of which are its home country. For example BA carrying paying passengers between Singapore and Sydney, or Singapore Airlines carrying them from Frankfurt to New York. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedoms_of_the_air https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedoms_of_the_air
- raverbashing 7y ago
  More important, 5th freedom is not a "low fare loophole" relying on an "old treaty". Not all countries/stops allow 5th freedom rights in all cases. Sounds like just journalistic exaggeration
  - colinbartlett 7y ago
    Exaggeration is right. There is really nothing special about these routes with respect to fares. Only that perhaps there is more competition. They are famous among aviation enthusiasts simply as a way to get access to airlines that one might otherwise have to travel great distances to try.
    - Scoundreller 7y ago
      What drives down their fares is this: If an airline based in A is running a flight A>B>C, they can’t feed any pax to B except from A, or carry pax further than C (without interlining). So there’s a bit more of an incentive to sell tickets B>C while other airlines flying that route can sell tickets to a much wider array of passengers (coming from pre-B (but not A) or going post-C).
      - raverbashing 7y ago
        You're right, and the fare is cheaper, but there are also downsides (usually frequency). Product varies a lot as well, the reasons for choosing an Emirates 5th freedom product are usually different from picking a different (5th freedom) airline on a route.
CalRobert 7y ago
Example - Ethiopian Airlines flies from Dublin to Los Angeles. Dublin is, I believe, a "fuel stop" since the flight originates in Ethiopia.
- londons_explore 7y ago
  To those wondering, Dublin is on the straight line path from Ethiopia to LA.
  - tatersolid 7y ago
    Well, technically, Dublin is on or near the Great Circle route from Ethiopia to LA.
    - StavrosK 7y ago
      Which is the straight line path on a sphere.
      - jaclaz 7y ago
        Which is called orthodromic: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_circle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_circle as opposed to loxodromic: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loxodromic_navigation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loxodromic_navigation
  - benj111 7y ago
    Here's a graphic http://www.gcmap.com/mapui?P=ADD-LAX http://www.gcmap.com/mapui?P=ADD-LAX I have to say its still unintuitive, I need a globe :/
    - jaclaz 7y ago
      Yep, but you have to compare it with this one: http://www.gcmap.com/mapui?P=ADD-DUB-LAX http://www.gcmap.com/mapui?P=ADD-DUB-LAX to see how close Dublin is to the theorical route you just posted.
sdrothrock 7y ago
> Some airlines are allowed to carry customers between two non-native countries, usually when a fuel stop is involved. It’s called the fifth freedom. Established with an international treaty in 1944, the nine aviation freedoms lay out what commercial airlines can and can’t do throughout the world. This paragraph is worded a bit confusingly, but it was pretty clear to me: the fifth freedom is the fifth of nine aviation freedoms from a treaty signed in 1944. Airline 1 from Country A Airline 2 from Country B Airline 1 is allowed to fly from A to B, refuel in B, and then fly from B to C. But the fifth freedom allows Airline 1 to pick up people in country B and provide them cheap flights to country C, thus competing with Airline 2, which is native to country B. It could be entirely possible that my understanding is incorrect, though... but that's what I got from their explanation. I do completely agree with other posters that this is thinly-veiled advertising, though. This stands out with their Japan flights for me, since I live in Japan and occasionally look for tickets. It's interesting that they point the price for Osaka-Honolulu because it's surprisingly low (~80% cheaper), but they conveniently neglect to mention that the Tokyo-LA flight is only 10-15% cheaper than a domestic airline.
- notahacker 7y ago
  Yep. Basically these flights are legs of flights with a stopover at intermediate destinations, and airlines will sell tickets all the way or for both individual legs at whatever price they think will maximise their revenue. For example I once flew London to Bangkok with EVA Airways of Taiwan, whilst most of the other passengers on the flight continued to Taipei (and some other passengers would have bought Bangkok to Taipei tickets). You can fly London-Taipei nonstopThe stopping route probably suited the airline as they had some demand from London and Bangkok to Taipei but not necessarily enough to fill separate aircraft from both destinations with the same frequency. Same goes for a Madrid to Quito flight stopping over at Bogota I once took - the aircraft could definitely have flown nonstop to Quito, but the airline would have found the more convoluted route easier to make a profit on due to relatively low demand to get to Ecuador. Sometimes this means a better deal than shorter haul flights so the airline can fill seats on their less popular leg, sometimes it's actually worse (especially if you're a frequent flyer more likely to have miles or offers with your local carrier). As the article points out, stopping flights also getting rarer as aircraft range increases and passenger demand increases because most people would prefer to fly London to Sydney without an hour in Singapore, and airlines find it much easier to fill flights to individual international destinations.
zen_of_prog 7y ago
This video explains it well: https://youtu.be/thqbjA2DC-E https://youtu.be/thqbjA2DC-E
graton 7y ago
The five freedoms of aviation are: 1) The right to fly over a foreign country without landing. 2) The right to refuel or carry out maintenance in a foreign country without embarking or disembarking passengers or cargo. 3) The right to fly from one's own country to another country. 4) The right to fly from another country to one's own. 5) The right to fly between two foreign countries on a flight originating or ending in one's own country. This video has a lot of good info on it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=thqbjA2DC-E https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=thqbjA2DC-E And wikipedia page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedoms_of_the_air https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedoms_of_the_air

appleflaxen 7y ago

Spot on; this is just such sloppy reporting. It also reads like it was written by the airlines involved in order to generate interest; a la PGs "submarine" blog post.

jagermo 7y ago
They also compare prices to Milan with Rome. Milan is about 600 km more north than Rome, its about a 6 hour drive if everything works out. Nobody who wants to go to Rome would fly to Milan.
- rz2k 7y ago
  After high school I went to visit friends on the Adriatic coast of Italy, then we went to the Aeolian Islands (we summited Stromboli which may not be allowed anymore). Anyway, I had very little money so I took a flight that was an option to fly from the "west coast of the US" to "western Europe". I waited for a nearby US departure since, our ground transportation is difficult, but flew into Paris, then took an overnight train to Bologna. When I left, I departed from Milan. The difficult part was that the shady company organizing the tickets told me the wrong Milan airport, but getting to Milan is easy. You could even take a train from Messina, since the train itself gets on the ferry from Sicily to the Italian peninsula. From Rome, Milan is only a three hour train ride with spacious seating and large windows to watch the scenery roll by. If you're on a tight budget with a flexible schedule, you can go a pretty long distance by train before it seems like any inconvenience at all.

darrenf 7y ago

Fifth freedom is the right for an airline to carry revenue traffic between two countries, neither of which are its home country. For example BA carrying paying passengers between Singapore and Sydney, or Singapore Airlines carrying them from Frankfurt to New York. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedoms_of_the_air https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedoms_of_the_air

raverbashing 7y ago
More important, 5th freedom is not a "low fare loophole" relying on an "old treaty". Not all countries/stops allow 5th freedom rights in all cases. Sounds like just journalistic exaggeration
- colinbartlett 7y ago
  Exaggeration is right. There is really nothing special about these routes with respect to fares. Only that perhaps there is more competition. They are famous among aviation enthusiasts simply as a way to get access to airlines that one might otherwise have to travel great distances to try.
  - Scoundreller 7y ago
    What drives down their fares is this: If an airline based in A is running a flight A>B>C, they can’t feed any pax to B except from A, or carry pax further than C (without interlining). So there’s a bit more of an incentive to sell tickets B>C while other airlines flying that route can sell tickets to a much wider array of passengers (coming from pre-B (but not A) or going post-C).
    - raverbashing 7y ago
      You're right, and the fare is cheaper, but there are also downsides (usually frequency). Product varies a lot as well, the reasons for choosing an Emirates 5th freedom product are usually different from picking a different (5th freedom) airline on a route.

CalRobert 7y ago

Example - Ethiopian Airlines flies from Dublin to Los Angeles. Dublin is, I believe, a "fuel stop" since the flight originates in Ethiopia.

londons_explore 7y ago
To those wondering, Dublin is on the straight line path from Ethiopia to LA.
- tatersolid 7y ago
  Well, technically, Dublin is on or near the Great Circle route from Ethiopia to LA.
  - StavrosK 7y ago
    Which is the straight line path on a sphere.
    - jaclaz 7y ago
      Which is called orthodromic: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_circle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_circle as opposed to loxodromic: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loxodromic_navigation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loxodromic_navigation
- benj111 7y ago
  Here's a graphic http://www.gcmap.com/mapui?P=ADD-LAX http://www.gcmap.com/mapui?P=ADD-LAX I have to say its still unintuitive, I need a globe :/
  - jaclaz 7y ago
    Yep, but you have to compare it with this one: http://www.gcmap.com/mapui?P=ADD-DUB-LAX http://www.gcmap.com/mapui?P=ADD-DUB-LAX to see how close Dublin is to the theorical route you just posted.

sdrothrock 7y ago

> Some airlines are allowed to carry customers between two non-native countries, usually when a fuel stop is involved. It’s called the fifth freedom. Established with an international treaty in 1944, the nine aviation freedoms lay out what commercial airlines can and can’t do throughout the world. This paragraph is worded a bit confusingly, but it was pretty clear to me: the fifth freedom is the fifth of nine aviation freedoms from a treaty signed in 1944. Airline 1 from Country A Airline 2 from Country B Airline 1 is allowed to fly from A to B, refuel in B, and then fly from B to C. But the fifth freedom allows Airline 1 to pick up people in country B and provide them cheap flights to country C, thus competing with Airline 2, which is native to country B. It could be entirely possible that my understanding is incorrect, though... but that's what I got from their explanation. I do completely agree with other posters that this is thinly-veiled advertising, though. This stands out with their Japan flights for me, since I live in Japan and occasionally look for tickets. It's interesting that they point the price for Osaka-Honolulu because it's surprisingly low (~80% cheaper), but they conveniently neglect to mention that the Tokyo-LA flight is only 10-15% cheaper than a domestic airline.

notahacker 7y ago
Yep. Basically these flights are legs of flights with a stopover at intermediate destinations, and airlines will sell tickets all the way or for both individual legs at whatever price they think will maximise their revenue. For example I once flew London to Bangkok with EVA Airways of Taiwan, whilst most of the other passengers on the flight continued to Taipei (and some other passengers would have bought Bangkok to Taipei tickets). You can fly London-Taipei nonstopThe stopping route probably suited the airline as they had some demand from London and Bangkok to Taipei but not necessarily enough to fill separate aircraft from both destinations with the same frequency. Same goes for a Madrid to Quito flight stopping over at Bogota I once took - the aircraft could definitely have flown nonstop to Quito, but the airline would have found the more convoluted route easier to make a profit on due to relatively low demand to get to Ecuador. Sometimes this means a better deal than shorter haul flights so the airline can fill seats on their less popular leg, sometimes it's actually worse (especially if you're a frequent flyer more likely to have miles or offers with your local carrier). As the article points out, stopping flights also getting rarer as aircraft range increases and passenger demand increases because most people would prefer to fly London to Sydney without an hour in Singapore, and airlines find it much easier to fill flights to individual international destinations.

zen_of_prog 7y ago

This video explains it well: https://youtu.be/thqbjA2DC-E https://youtu.be/thqbjA2DC-E

graton 7y ago

The five freedoms of aviation are: 1) The right to fly over a foreign country without landing. 2) The right to refuel or carry out maintenance in a foreign country without embarking or disembarking passengers or cargo. 3) The right to fly from one's own country to another country. 4) The right to fly from another country to one's own. 5) The right to fly between two foreign countries on a flight originating or ending in one's own country. This video has a lot of good info on it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=thqbjA2DC-E https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=thqbjA2DC-E And wikipedia page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedoms_of_the_air https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedoms_of_the_air