Find cheaper airfares and reward seats on airlines’ non-home country routes

One of the best deals for travelers sitting on a pile of Qantas points was flying Emirates business class between Sydney and Christchurch. Listed as EK412 on the Qantas website, the three-hour flight is operated by the goddess of the skies A380, and business class passengers enjoy the acclaimed seating, service and style of one of the world’s best airlines.

Currently, this business class seat costs the same number of Qantas points as a Sydney-Christchurch Qantas return flight; Here, you’ll be on a smaller Boeing 737 with business class, no lie-flat option, just a larger seat than economy class. This hack won’t be very useful from March 31, when Qantas will need more points to book Classic Reward seats on Emirates.

So how is it that a Dubai-based carrier can pick up passengers in Australia and fly them to New Zealand without having to go through its home base? The answer is fifth freedom rights, one of the nine Freedom of the Air rights codified under the Convention on International Civil Aviation in December 1944. Chicago Convention.

Under standard aviation rules, airlines can only sell flights to or from their own country. But fifth freedom rights give the carrier the right to fly passengers between two foreign countries, provided the journey begins or ends in the carrier’s home country.

Without such rights, it would not be possible for Qantas flight QF1, which operates from Sydney to London via Singapore, to pick up passengers in Singapore and fly to London and back. Qantas has fifth freedom rights, which allows it to sell round-trip tickets between Singapore and London on this route. Under fifth freedom rights, Ireland’s Aer Lingus can pick up passengers from Manchester, England, and fly them to Orlando in the USA; Singapore Airlines can fly passengers between Milan and Barcelona; Emirates can fly passengers from Milan to New York; and Ethiopian Airlines can pick up passengers from Seoul and fly them to Tokyo.

How do fifth freedom rights arise?

Fifth freedom rights are an agreement negotiated between the airline and the countries involved. Naturally, countries are not keen on foreign airlines interfering in their territory to the detriment of their national carriers, and this is not a common occurrence. Turkish Airlines now operates flights to Australia via Kuala Lumpur from its main base in Istanbul. The airline would probably welcome the opportunity to sell tickets from Kuala Lumpur to Melbourne and Sydney, but fifth freedom has not yet been granted.

Australian Frequent Flyer He compiled a comprehensive list of existing routes with fifth freedom rights. Note that Turkish Airlines has a fifth freedom right to fly passengers between Singapore and Melbourne, but does not assume this because it operates via Kuala Lumpur.

Do these rights benefit travelers?

Fifth freedom flights can be a win for passengers because the airline may find it difficult to fill seats in that portion of the flight and therefore price them aggressively to fill the seats. This includes intra-European routes such as Ethiopian Airlines’ Stockholm-Oslo flight or Aircalin’s Bangkok-Paris flight.

Another example is Singapore Airlines’ flight between Frankfurt and New York. Round-trip economy fare on this route in March with Singapore Airlines can cost as little as €441 ($736); That’s about $60 less than Lufthansa charges for the same flight, but the big savings are for business travelers. For a roundtrip ticket from Frankfurt to New York in March, the cheapest business class seat on a Singapore Airlines flight is €1241 ($2070) cheaper than the same seat on Lufthansa, and the Asian carrier’s business class is one of the best in the world. The same goes for award seats; fifth freedom flights generally have more availability as there are more available seats.

Fifth free flights for the airline increase revenue, optimize aircraft utilization and expand their network without the need for additional long-haul aircraft. An example of this is Emirates flight EK412 from Dubai. This flight arrives in Sydney early in the morning and departs for Christchurch a few hours later. In the evening, the aircraft will return on flight EK413, returning to Sydney and departing for Dubai in the late evening. As well as offering a two-stop service from Europe to Christchurch for New Zealand passengers, the airline also picks up Australians crossing the ditch. A daily non-stop A380 service from Dubai to Christchurch probably wouldn’t make financial sense, but a service via Sydney is the icing on the cake.

Fifth freedom rights also have implications for travelers looking to take a break. Airlines transiting through a foreign country from point of origin to final destination cannot allow passengers to stay at the transit point and board the next flight unless they have fifth freedom rights. Since no airline operating non-stop flights between Australian cities and Bangkok has fifth freedom rights, a passenger from Australia wishing to make a stopover in Bangkok will need to fly on Thai Airways.

How to find fifth freedom flights?

Do you have much time? Because outside the Australian Frequent Flyer list, fifth freedom flights are as elusive as great airport coffee. One way is to go to your favorite air travel search engine, enter your flight details as normal, select only non-stop flights and delete all airlines based in the country you want to fly to and the country you are flying to. If there are any flights left, these will most likely be the fifth freedom flights.

I tried this using Skyscanner to find a flight from Frankfurt to New York, and the search turned up two results. Besides the Singapore Airlines flight mentioned above, Brussels Airlines also appeared. A deeper investigation reveals that this Brussels Airlines is a codeshare flight operated by Lufthansa or United Airlines, so it is not actually a fifth freedom flight.

They may be scarce and hard to find, but fifth freedom flights offer short-hop widebody cabins, cheaper fares, and award seats that haven’t gone away yet. If you find one, it’s a gold medal moment.