Hello and welcome to today's independent travel podcast with me Simon Calder on Friday the 12th of January.

Today I am going to be rivetingly interesting. Well, you'll be the judge of that, about sixth freedom flying.

What it is, how you can benefit from it and how you definitely

can't benefit from it okay sixth freedom flying very simply means that an airline has the right

to fly people from somewhere outside its home country via its home country to another country.

And a perfectly good example is from Dublin to London Heathrow on British Airways and from

there onwards to New York. That is Sixth Freedom Flying under the terminology adopted by the International Civil Aviation

Organization.

Now, airlines are very keen to offer competitive Sixth Freedom flights.

So, for example, if you are British Airways and you want to fill up some of your

empty seats, because you know you're going to have some, between Dublin and Heathrow, and also

between London and New York, then you might well think, okay, how are we going to do this? I know

we will allow some of these seats to be sold at a really

good low rate so that people in Dublin who are thinking I've got to get to New York, they're going

to look and they think, okay, well I could go non-stop on Delta or Aer Lingus or United.

Or I could go on this longer trip, which actually means flying across to London and then flying back over Ireland on the way to New York.

But look at the deal, I'll get and also, by the way, get some useful avios points and some Tia points for loyalty schemes.

So that's great.

And the airline will tune its fares so that it kind of maximizes the seat it fills and gets as much business as it can.

Now, this is a real life example because, and the reason I'm talking to

you about it today, head for points, the very good frequent flyer website, was so worthwhile

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