Scheduled Flights and Charter Flights, What’s The Difference?

Scheduled flights leave airports at regular intervals, and tickets are sold up to the day of the flight by the airline company. Charter flights are booked in advance, usually by tour operators who sell tickets in travel agents, over the phone and from their own websites.

Tour operators sell their holidays as part of a package which can include accommodation, catering, activities and additional needs such as flight transfers. Scheduled flight tickets will tend to increase in price as the departure date approaches, because last minute tickets are almost always purchased. Tour operators however, will often drop the prices of tickets for charter flights, as they try to fill as many seats of the booked aircraft as possible and maximise their profits or minimise their losses.

Tour operators have been known to cancel flights at the last minute because they failed to sell enough tickets to make flights financially profitable. They tend to have small profit margins and can even go out of business, leaving unfortunate customers with useless holidays booked in their diaries.

Customers are becoming more sophisticated, and are increasingly comparing prices and services from the comfort of their own home via the internet. It used to be time-consuming to compare prices of holidays to ensure you get the best deal, but now it can be done on seconds on numerous comparison websites. Scheduled flights can’t be beaten for reliability, but the special discounts offered by tour operators can be very appealing.

Of course, there are other ways of saving money on holidays, including avoiding booking a holiday in the school holidays, and choosing to fly on an odd day, such as Wednesday. Most people choose to fly on weekends and so these tend to be the most expensive flights of the week.

Small airlines are offering very competitive prices when you fly from smaller airports such as Stansted, but you can often find that the reduction in money spent on flights can be replaced with transport expenses getting to and from out of town airports upon arrival. Budget airlines can save you a great deal of money, but the overall trip doesn’t always work out cheaper as a result.

Should we be mourning the loss of luxury air travel? No, expense is what matters to us, and budget airlines have driven down the price of air travel, opening up international holidays to be experienced by more people than ever before.

John Mce writes on a number of subjects including flights.