One of three shelf lives
Answers That Expire in Hours
Three things that are true when an operator says them and can be untrue by the afternoon. This shelf governs the other two, because a quote is only as durable as its shortest lived part.
Why these three run the whole quote
A charter price is a stack of answers, and the stack cannot outlive its weakest member. Two of the three here move by the hour and the third only ever shrinks, so the number they support moves with them.
That is why every quote from this desk carries the time it was assembled. It is not a hedge. It is the most important property of the figure.
What they have in common
None of them is about the trip. They are about somebody else's fleet on somebody else's morning: what is idle, where it is standing, and how much of the crew's working day is left.
A passenger can change none of the three. What a passenger can change is how much flexibility surrounds them, which is why whether the dates can move is worth more than any negotiation.
The one that money cannot touch
Two of these three respond to money: a better placed aircraft costs less, a worse placed one costs more. The crew clock does not. When it runs out the aircraft stops, and an operator that offered to stretch it would be telling you something you would not want to know.
The three
- Answers that expire in hoursWhether an aircraft is actually freeThe most perishable answer in charter. True when an operator says it, and capable of being untrue before lunch, because somebody else is asking the same question.
- Answers that expire in hoursWhere the aircraft is sitting right nowAn aircraft two states away has to be flown to you empty first, and somebody pays for that. It is the single largest thing separating two quotes for the same trip.
- Answers that expire in hoursHow much duty the crew has leftA crew is not a resource that can be stretched. When the clock runs out the aircraft stops, and no amount of money restarts it.