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- Herausgeber: tredition
- Kategorie: Lebensstil
- Sprache: Englisch
Air travel is, ideally, supposed to be an enjoyable experience for the leisure traveller and at least a fast and efficient one for those travelling because they have to - either on business or for another given reason. Unfortunately, real life experience shows that there are many variables that can get massively in the way of such aspiration. Some aspects are, obviously, completely out of your control – such as industrial action or adverse weather conditions – but many others can be positively influenced by savvy travel planning and behaviour. And, indeed, that is the purpose of this book: providing ideas on tactics to adopt to avoid or, at least, minimise the hassle of air travel.
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Seitenzahl: 189
Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2023
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To the passionate air travellers in my family: Annegret Jessica, Marco, Lars Svenja, Bedo, Lena Stella, Julian
About this Book
Air travel is, ideally, supposed to be an enjoyable experience for the leisure traveller and at least a fast and efficient one for those travelling because they have to - either on business or for another given reason. Unfortunately, real life experience shows that there are many variables that can get massively in the way of such aspiration. Some aspects are, obviously, completely out of your control – such as industrial action or adverse weather conditions – but many others can be positively influenced by savvy travel planning and behaviour. And, indeed, that is the purpose of this book: providing ideas on tactics to adopt to avoid or, at least, minimise the hassle of air travel.
About the Author
Klaus D. Mittorp has been travelling by air since he was a child. Both as senior executive as well as leisure traveller he has accumulated millions of air miles on all continents and with them lots of insights into what works and what doesn’t when you take a plane. He volunteers regularly with the Airport Chaplaincy at Frankfurt International Airport, continental Europe’s largest hub.
Klaus D. Mittorp
How to Take the Stress out of Air Travel
Your Guide to an Enjoyable Flight Experience
© 2023 Klaus D. Mittorp
The moral right of the author has been asserted.
Cover: Jeremie (via Pixabay)
Published and printed by:
Burghley Books an imprint of tredition GmbH An der Strusbek 10 D-22926 Ahrensburg
ISBN:
978-3-347-95332-1
(e-Book
978-3-347-95333-8)
All rights reserved.
Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise) without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the publisher of this book.
Although the author and publisher have made every effort to ensure that the information in this book was correct at the time of going to press, the author and publisher do not assume and hereby disclaim any liability to any party for any loss, damage, or disruption caused by errors or omissions, whether such errors or omissions result from negligence, accident, or any other cause.
Inhalt
Cover
Widmung
Titelblatt
Urheberrechte
Preface
Advance Planning and Research
Type of Booking
Itinerary
The world’s longest flights5
Destination Airport
Global Airports
Large Airports
Medium-Sized Airports
Small Airports
Type of Carrier
Low-Cost Airlines
Charter Airlines
Network Airlines
Airlines to Consider
Risk Situation
Booking the Journey
Timing
Booking Channels
Search Engines
Booking Websites
The Booking Process
Choosing a Flight
Main Airline Alliances42
Class of Travel and Fare Classes
Selecting additional Services
Payment
Reservation Code
Ticket Number
Things to Do After Booking
The Flight
Travelling to the Airport
Arriving at the Airport
Checking-in
Passing Security
Passport Control
Time in the Departure Lounge
Going to the Gate
Boarding the Plane
Taking your Seat
Storing Hand Luggage
During the Flight
Airline Service Levels
De-Boarding
Transfers
Immigration/Border Control
Baggage Collection
Customs
Leaving the Airport
Special Requests
Restricted Mobility
Health Issues
Special Meals
VIP Service
Travelling with Children
When Things go Wrong
What Approach to Take
Critical Situations
Missed Connections
Delays
Cancellations
Denial of Transportation
Lost or Damaged Baggage
Inconvenient Situations
Seat Change
Downgrade
Catering
Lodging a Complaint
Compensation for Irregularities
European Union (EU)
United States (US)
Canada
Other Jurisdictions
Legal Action
Compromised Family Trip
Delayed COVID Refund
Technical Issues
More Technical Issues
Injury
No Vouchers, Please
Dirty Seat
Seat Change
Death of a Co-Pilot
Medical Emergencies
Where to Turn for Help
Airlines
Local Authorities and Services
Airport Chaplaincy
Airport Social Care Services
Conclusion
Index
How to Take the Stress out of Air Travel
Cover
Widmung
Titelblatt
Urheberrechte
Preface
Index
How to Take the Stress out of Air Travel
Cover
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Preface
Air travel is, ideally, supposed to be an enjoyable experience for the leisure traveller and, at least, a fast and efficient one for those travelling because they have to - either on business or for another given reason.
Unfortunately, real life experience shows that there are many variables that can get massively in the way of such aspiration.
A survey conducted by Priority Pass1 showed that air travellers were most worried about getting stuck on the way to the airport, losing baggage, missing boarding and/or connecting flights and experiencing delays.
The same survey also highlighted the phases of travel people find the most stressful at the airport: baggage collection, transfers and passing security.
Indeed, many people I meet can tell stories about air travel mishaps – missed connections, lost baggage and the like. But most travellers talk about these occurrences quite naturally as if they were some sort of force majeure.
Some aspects are, obviously, completely out of your control – such as industrial action or adverse weather conditions – but I believe many others can be positively influenced by knowledge, savvy travel planning and conscious behaviour.
And, indeed, that is the purpose of this book: providing insights and ideas on tactics to adopt to avoid or at least minimise the hassle of air travel.
I have been travelling by air since I was a child and have enjoyed it - most of the time. I have accumulated millions of air miles on all continents and with them lots of insights into what works and what doesn’t when you take a plane.
It goes without saying that what works well for me, may not work for others and not everything works equally well all over the world. But, based on my personal experience, I do strongly believe that a lot of the hassle air travellers are subject to can be avoided.
Let’s assume you are travelling from A to C with a connection in B. You will, thus, have two flight segments: A to B and B to C. If you go for the minimum connecting time in B and choose a flight from A to B that is known to be delayed quite often, don’t be surprised if you actually miss your flight from B to C and suffer the related hassle.
The choice of airport, airline and timing can all influence the way your travel turns out, as can the degree of intelligence and preparation you are willing to invest before embarking on your journey.
This book goes through all the various phases of air travel from planning to arriving and provides practical advice on how to navigate each of them. At the same time, it adds a few anecdotes from the plentiful world of air travel.
But, although it also touches some aspects of passenger rights, this book does not and cannot provide or replace any professional legal advice.
Equally, whilst the airline industry has become highly aware environmentally, this volume does not contemplate any related aspects, which, in my view, are down to individual judgement and, particularly, freedom of choice.
June 2023
1 https://www.prioritypass.com/blog/2019/airport-stress-survey
Advance Planning and Research
whilst it may sound trivial, it is still true: some potential future hassle is embedded in choices made or neglected at the earliest stage of travel – that of advance planning. Before you even start thinking about actually placing a booking with an airline, travel agent or operator there are already a few decisional waypoints that will strongly influence your later travel experience. And for those you can either make some informed choices or leave them to accident.
Experience shows that time and effort you invest at this stage in some research and planning is well spent and richly pays off not only in terms of potential cost saving but also with a better, less stressful travel experience.
Let us take a look at what matters at this stage.
When embarking on air travel there are numerous reasons that make it necessary for you to take a plane.
You may be planning a holiday which means you are potentially flexible in the choice of destination. Or you travel for a specific business (e.g. meeting) or personal reason (e.g. visiting relatives or friends) in which case you normally have limited influence on your final destination.
In both cases there are a number of aspects that you should consider from the outset when planning the journey in order for things to work out well. In the case of a holiday, you can even, in some cases, make them part of the criteria for choosing a destination altogether.
The initial aspects I recommend to consider at this stage are:
• type of booking
• itinerary
• destination airport
• type of carrier
• potential airlines
As a first step let us look at these in more detail.
Type of Booking
Basically, there are two types of booking you can choose (and we will look at the booking process in more detail later in this book):
• either you book your air travel as part of a broader package or
• you book it ad-hoc as a single service.
This may, initially, sound irrelevant, but it can make a significant difference not only on price. In fact, in most jurisdictions laws and regulations governing these two types of booking are vastly different.
If you book a package, this will typically include accommodation, air travel, transfers and, possibly, additional services such as tours, meals etc. Legally, this means you have one tour operator as your counterpart who sells the entire package.
Whilst this is convenient, it in turn limits your influence on the actual flight. In most cases you will not be entitled to travel on a specific flight with a specific airline at a specific time but only generically to air travel to the intended destination. In practice this means that the tour operators may be entitled to change times and air carriers indicated in the original booking as they feel fit.
If, for example, you want to travel on a certain airline (or specifically avoid one) this type of booking has the potential to cause you stress at some point. Equally, if things go wrong the assistance will have to come from the tour operator rather than the airline and, as tour operators are less present at airports than airlines, this may turn out to be a disadvantage.
On the other hand, having the tour operator as a single counterpart can be an advantage if you have to ask for a refund. This became clearly evident during times of Covid restrictions when many people could not undertake their previously booked travel. In many countries consumer rights made it easier for them to get their money back. In some jurisdictions2 this kind of booking is even governed by specific consumer friendly legislation. Some consumer associations have therefore issued recommendations for this type of booking.
Conversely, booking a specific flight with a specific airline provides you with different and stronger contractual rights vis-à-vis the airline (and possibly the travel agent) including liability in case of irregular operations.
To make it clear: I am not advocating one type of booking against the other. They both clearly have their advantages and disadvantages. The important aspect is that you consider beforehand which type of booking best suits your needs and budget in order to avoid frustration later.
Itinerary
If you have to fly from A to B, you might be wondering why you should bother about your itinerary.
There are various reasons. Let us assume you want to fly from New York to Athens. The first possibility is, obviously, to search for a direct flight on that route.
But there are other options. On the way from New York to Athens you have a number of European hubs, mainly London, Paris, Amsterdam, Frankfurt or Zurich, where you could stop-over on your way to Athens. If you are open to this kind of itinerary you will significantly broaden your choice of possible carriers and, hence, finding a better deal.
As airlines are in competition to each other they will sometimes offer attractive deals in the strong home markets of their competitors. A flight from, say, London to Chicago might be cheaper on British Airways if booked as Frankfurt-London-Chicago and, likewise, a flight from Frankfurt to Chicago on Lufthansa might be priced more attractively if you book e.g. Budapest-Frankfurt-Chicago.
Particularly if you are travelling out of Europe and are looking for attractive Business or First Class fares, you should consider such options.
There are also specialised websites and travel agents who specifically search for such deals. You should, however, always take into account that you have to actually commence your travel in the city where the booking starts and calculate the extra time and budget to get there before you embark on your actual travel3.
There are also other considerations such as time and hassle. If you are travelling, say, from Singapore to New York, you have the option of a non-stop flight with Singapore Airlines. With over 9.500 miles, it is currently the longest non-stop flight available.4
But do you want to spend 19 hours in a row on a plane, even if you are travelling in Business Class? You may find this is highly convenient and exactly meets your needs.
If not, you have other options, even with Singapore Airlines. Alternatively, in fact, they have a Singapore-Frankfurt-New York connection, or, as described earlier, you can choose an itinerary through one of the numerous European hubs.
The world’s longest flights5
Route
Carrier
Distance (miles)
Aircraft
Singapore (SIN) to New York (JFK)
Singapore Airlines
9,537
A350
Singapore (SIN) to Newark (EWR)
Singapore Airlines
9,523
A350
Perth (PER) to London (LHR)
Qantas
9,010
B787
Melbourne (MEL) to Dallas (DFW)
Qantas
8,992
B787
Auckland (AKL) to New York (JFK)
Air New Zealand & Qantas
8,828
B787
Dubai (DXB) to Auckland (AKL)
Emirates
8,824
A380
Singapore (SIN) to Los Angeles (LAX)
Singapore Airlines
8,770
A350
Bangalore (BLR) to San Francisco (SFO)
Air India
8,701
B777
Houston (IAH) to Sydney (SYD)
United Airlines
8,596
B787
Sydney (SYD) to Dallas (DFW)
Qantas
8,578
B787
Manila (MNL) to New York (JFK)
Philippine Airlines
8,520
A350
Singapore (SIN) to San Francisco (SFO)
Singapore Airlines & United Airlines
8,446
A350/B787
Atlanta (ATL) to Johannesburg (JNB)
Delta
8,439
A350
Destination Airport
If you are travelling to a certain destination, don’t assume there is just one airport you can fly to.
Should your travel take you to a large international mega-city such as New York, London or Paris, you might be aware that you have three, four or even five airports serving the destination.
London, as a prime example, can be reached through the airports of Heathrow, Gatwick, City, Stansted and Luton. And this does not even consider that there are also the international airports of Bristol and Birmingham within a range of 100 miles.
But even if you are travelling to smaller places, you may have a plentiful choice. As an example, take the Italian town of Florence.
Florence has its own international airport (Peretola) but within a distance of less than 80 miles you have two other international airports: Bologna (Borgo Panigale) and Pisa (Galileo Galilei) which even have a direct bus shuttle service to Florence.
But does this really matter to travel planning? Why bother?
There are a number of reasons. Airports are served by very different airlines, different punctuality performance and have very different degrees of ground transportation. And both aspects may have decisive influence on the cost, time and, ultimately, hassle of your travel.
Furthermore, if you are travelling to a destination where you are going to transfer to a connecting flight you will want to avoid changing airports, if at all possible.
Transferring between La Guardia and John F. Kennedy airports in New York or between Gatwick and Heathrow in London can be quite a challenge.
Therefore it is not a minor detail to which airport you actually choose to book your ticket.
Some good free sources to research the airports you might consider are shown in the following table:
Source (Internet)
Content
flightradar24.com
website for live tracking of flights worldwide also shows airports on a map and provides data on schedules arrivals and departures
flightconnections.com
website allows you to insert any airport worldwide and will show all active direct flight routes to and from this airport
Airport websites
most airports have websites which can be easily found through research engines. They typically provide lots of information from layout to ground transportation
airlinequality.com
independent airport customer reviews
flighstats.com
statistics on airport performance regarding ontime operations
flightaware.com
operational information on airports and airlines
Looking at these sources may well be worth your while as they show some significant differences.
In terms of on-time performance, for example, you will find that the world’s most punctual global airports are:
Global Airports
Airport
Routes Served
% of flights departing on time
Tokyo Haneda (HND)
97
90.3
Bangalore (BLR)
98
84.1
Salt Lake City (SLC)
103
83.9
Detroit (DTW)
130
8.,6
Philadelphia (PHL)
134
82.5
Minneapolis (MSP)
162
81.9
Delhi (DEL)
149
81.8
Source: CIRIUM THE ON-TIME PERFORMANCE REVIEW 2022
The best on-time performance in Latin America belonged to Bogota (BOG) with 80.7 % of on time departures, the best global airport in Europe was Madrid (MAD) with 79.8 % of flights leaving on schedule. Looking at other categories of airports the following picture emerges:
Large Airports
Airport
Routes Served
% of flights departing on time
Osaka (ITM)
34
94.1
Fukuoka (FUK)
41
90.6
Sapporo(CTS)
37
89.7
Panama (PTY)
83
89.2
Lima (LIM)
67
89.2
Source: CIRIUM THE ON-TIME PERFORMANCE REVIEW 2022
Medium-Sized Airports
Airport
Routes Served
% of flights departing on time
Chubu (NGO)
39
94.2
Sendai (SDJ)
15
91.4
Kagoshima (KOJ)
17
89.7
Recife (REF)
55
88.9
Tenerife (TFN)
31
88.4
Source: CIRIUM THE ON-TIME PERFORMANCE REVIEW 2022
Small Airports
Airport
Routes Served
% of flights departing on time
Miyazaki (KMI)
9
93.9
Matsuyama (MYJ)
7
92.6
Kumamoto (KMJ)
9
92.3
Taipei (TSA)
10
91.9
Cuiaba (CGB)
38
91.3
Source: CIRIUM THE ON-TIME PERFORMANCE REVIEW 2022
Amongst these other airport categories, the best performing in Europe are Stockholm-Bromma (not Arlanda), Bilbao and St. Petersburg6 in Africa Addis Adeba and Beirut.
It is difficult not to note in these listing the predominance of Japanese airports (alongside US ones). In Europe, interestingly, Spanish airports distinguish themselves in relative terms for punctuality.
Another aspect that may influence your choice of airport (if you have one) are the waiting times at security check-points. These are, by the way, also the aspect of travel which generates the highest levels of passenger dissatisfaction (13 %)7
And, indeed, there are differences. In 2022, for example, the average waiting times for security screening at UK airports ranged from 12 minutes at London City to 35 minutes at Leeds-Bradford. London Heathrow was at 20 minutes, London Gatwick at 168.
In the US average waiting times ranged from 9.1 minutes in Salt Lake City (shortest) to 23.1 minutes in Newark (longest)9.
In Europe some of the airports with the lowest average waiting times at security (under four minutes) are Milan Linate, Rome Fiumicino, Madrid and Barcelona.
Even if you don’t have the possibility to opt for another airport you might consider taking steps to reduce your waiting time by carefully choosing the timing of your flight.
For example, if you’re booking a trip that goes through Newark, according to TSA statistics the best time to go through security would be Friday from 10 – 11 p.m., which had an average wait time of 15 minutes (against the average of 23.1).
