A positioning flight is a separately booked flight to the airport where the real trip starts, often because that is where award space was found.
A positioning flight is a separately booked flight to the airport where the real trip starts, often because that is where award space was found.
Also called: Positioning trip.
How it works#
A positioning flight sits on its own ticket and is legally disconnected from the main journey. If it runs late, nobody is responsible for the missed onward flight: the main booking simply goes unused and that airline can apply its own cancellation terms. Planning this way means leaving a large buffer, ideally an overnight stay, and treating the two parts as independent trips.
Not to be confused with#
A positioning flight is not the same as a feeder flight inside the same ticket: a ticketed feeder is part of the contract of carriage, a positioning flight sits outside it.
In German#
The German term is Positionierungsflug. German version of this term
Related terms#
- Separate tickets: Separate tickets are two independent bookings covering one journey with a connection, where no airline is responsible for the transfer between them.
- Minimum connection time: Minimum connection time is the shortest connection a reservation system will sell at a given airport between two flights.
- Open jaw: An open jaw is a round trip on one ticket where the return airport differs from the outbound destination, with the gap covered some other way.
Articles that use this term#
TopicEvery article and term onPoints and miles.