Comment by sdrothrock | Hacker News Reader

Comment by sdrothrock | Hacker News Reader

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> 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.

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.

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