Holds for this trip
Whether the Dates Can Move
The answer that saves the most money, and the one people volunteer least often because they assume charter means fixed. A day either way lets an operator solve a positioning problem instead of charging for it.
- What the answer is
- How firm the dates are: both ends fixed, one end fixed, or a day of movement either way.
- How long it stays true
- Until the reason behind the dates changes, which is usually when a meeting or an event moves.
- What happens when it stops being true
- The advantage disappears. A trip that was flexible and became fixed is quoted as a fixed trip, and the earlier number no longer applies.
Why a day is worth so much
Because of where the aircraft is standing. An operator whose aircraft is badly placed on Tuesday may be perfectly placed on Wednesday, and the difference is a positioning flight that does not have to happen.
That is not a discount anybody is granting. It is a cost that stops existing.
What flexibility is not
It is not haggling, and this desk does not haggle. An operator's number is what its aircraft, its crew and its position make it, and pushing on it produces either a no or a worse aircraft.
Moving a date is the one lever a passenger holds that changes the underlying arithmetic rather than the negotiation.
How much movement is useful
A day either way is usually enough to matter. Half a day sometimes helps at the margins. A week of flexibility is not proportionally better, because operators do not plan that far out in a way that can be matched against.
The request form asks how firm the dates are as a plain question with four answers, because the honest one is more useful to an operator than a hopeful one.
When it stops being true
When the reason behind the dates hardens. Somebody who said flexible in the first week and is now working to a fixed meeting should say so, because a quote assembled on the flexible answer will not survive the change and it is better to find that out at the desk than at the ramp.
Answers that hold for this trip, one of three shelf lives in what a quote rests on