
A Low-Fare Loophole for International Travelers - prostoalex
https://www.wsj.com/articles/a-low-fare-loophole-for-international-travelers-1540992568?mod=rsswn
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avianlyric
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.

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

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londons_explore
To those wondering, Dublin is on the straight line path from Ethiopia to LA.

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tatersolid
Well, technically, Dublin is on or near the _Great Circle_ route from Ethiopia
to LA.

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StavrosK
Which is the straight line path on a sphere.

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jaclaz
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)

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droithomme
Hm, I think this article might possibly be astroturfing/stealth advertising
Emirates, maybe some others.

It says due to a treaty they are the cheapest flight from New York to Italy,
at $988, compared to United charging $3328.

Checking some flight sites I see Emirates prominently featured at the top of
pages as a sponsored result. Their costs are not the lowest. And $3328 is not
a normal lowest priced ticket, I wonder how many dates they had to look at and
other cheaper flights they had to ignore to list that United fare as one of
the comparisons. Definitely some cherry picking going on on that one.

I found Oct 16-Oct 30 from New York to Rome for $365. Granted outbound is
American and inbound is Finnair makes a stop in Helsinki with a 12 hr layover.
But hey for $365...

In any case I don't believe it's true that flights with the characteristics in
the article are always the cheapest, or maybe not even most of the time.

It doesn't really seem like a loophole anyway. Singapore Airlines flying from
Singapore to Honolulu to San Francisco is obviously a legitimate flight. If
some people only want the Honolulu leg there's nothing wrong with that, it's
not a loophole or trick.

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tpmx
A list of routes like these:

[https://www.australianfrequentflyer.com.au/fifth-freedom-
rou...](https://www.australianfrequentflyer.com.au/fifth-freedom-routes/)

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eaenki
Really? The author touts how amazing a $900 fare is (MXP-JFK) but a quick
search on Expedia returns the same flight, two ways, non stop, Iberia/American
for $322. And I entered a random date. Depressingly bad journalism.

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devit
Why is there a requirement for only flying from/to the airline's country?

What is stopping any airline from simply opening fully owned subsidiaries in
every country they want to fly from/to?

Or alternatively effectively doing the same by leasing their aircraft on a
hourly basis to another airline from the desired country?

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Marazan
A fully owned subsidiary would (depending on the laws of the country) not be
considered 'local'.

See complicated tracking of ownership of European Airlines to meet local
ownership requirements.

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joking
At least any European airline can operate on any part of Europe. One of the
problems with brexit, is that with the merge of British Airways and Iberia,
Iberia may lose the rights to take of from Madrid for all their latam flights.

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chinhodado
So I assume if I search for flights on any aggregator site, these will show
up? It's not like they're secret or anything?

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londons_explore
Yes, they do. Not all cheap flights show up on all aggregators though - the
ticketing data feeds used by airlines are arcane and very complex, and some
aggregators ignore some corner cases, meaning some good tickets might not be
shown.

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LadyChillalot
I have used [https://skiplagged.com](https://skiplagged.com) that takes
advantage of this rule but takes it slightly further. You book the entire
flight but don't get on the second leg of your flight. Occasionally it comes
out cheaper than if you just book the first leg on the same flight.

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atdrummond
Hidden city ticketing isn't the same thing and can result in losing access to
one's frequent flier account or even being banned from an airline. In the US
I'd only risk it on Southwest.

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londons_explore
Are there any reports of anyone being banned or punished in any way for this?
(with the exception of bloggers/youtubers who are advertising the practice)

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Ididntdothis
I did that two years ago when flying from Los Angeles . Not to save money but
travel plans had changed so it was better to get off in Amsterdam instead of
continuing to London. It took a lot of convincing to get the airline to stop
the bags in Amsterdam. Finally they did it but we got a stern warning to never
do this again. Not sure if there would have been a ban but they really really
really didn’t like it.

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zulln
That is with bags though, with understandable is more work for them.

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Ididntdothis
Possible. Although I don’t really understand why it’s more work.

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zymhan
They have to manually intercept your bags from being transferred to the next
flight.

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Ididntdothis
Are you sure? At check in they always put a destination sticker on the bags.
In this case they just put Amsterdam instead of London on the bag. It didn’t
seem to be much of a hassle.

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theodorton
You normally check in bags for your final destination when all legs of the
trip are with the same airline

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ledauphin
I'm missing the part of the article where it explains why this leads to lower
fares? just because the native airlines on either end of a specific route
don't compete with each other?

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ChrisArchitect
geez, mark as (2018) please

