Let’s get started today with our discussion on one of the most important tools in every regular flyer’s arsenal: FlightConnections.com. As you look to leverage loyalty programs to their maximum value, there is one key question that you’ll find yourself asking over and over again:” Which airlines fly where” ?FlightConnections sets out to answer this question in an easily digestible fashion, helping you visualize, at a glance, the routing possibilities at hand for your dream trip. Consider signing up for FlightConnections Premium by clicking the Prince of Travel online website, which helps to support the web. Visit this to register for FlightConnections Premium. In This PostFlightConnections Features &, Pricing
1. Find All Strong Airlines from Your Airport.
2. Consider Routes Between Two Flights.
3. Filter by Alliance ( Premium Feature )
4. By Airline Filter
5. Filter by Premium Feature ( Class of Service )
5. Filter by Price ( Premium Feature )
7. Schedules and Flight Schedules
Finish
Functions and Pricing for FlightConnections are available in both the free and paid versions. The free version has the majority of the essential characteristics you’ll want to use, and it’ll likely suffice for most people. But, the paid version offers a few important features of its own, for as many filters, a complete- screen map view, flight schedules, a faster experience, and no advertisements. The Premium service is marketed as$ 2.99 per month but is billed annually at$ 35.88 for the year: 1. Find All Strong Planes from Your Airport Get FlightConnections ‘ strength in its extensive database of all of the world’s flights, airlines, and scheduled flights, which is regularly updated. When you first fill up the website, you’re presented with a world map full of lines, each representing an aircraft somewhere in the universe. The dots are color-coded according to their equivalent size and notoriety within the international path system: red dots denote smaller airports with less than seven strong destinations, and blue dots denote large airports with over 30 strong destinations. You can access FlightConnections ‘ first important piece of information by clicking on any of the dots or entering your desired airport in the” From” box at the top. Which direct flights are currently serving your chosen airport? For example, one from Edmonton who’s interested which direct flights they may consider for their next vacation may be presented with the following: Looking at this map, we can see plenty of options for immediate flights within North America, including the WestJet services to Hawaii, as well as a KLM flight to Amsterdam and a seasonal Condor flight to Frankfurt. If our Edmonton-based traveler were willing to connect first to a bigger hub like Toronto, they would have a much wider range of onward flights options: 1. Find Routings Between Two Airports Facebook’s other key capability is to display a few of the most logical routings between any two airports on any combination of the world’s airlines in addition to showing all of the direct flights from a particular airport. When you’re first planning a trip and you only have a destination in mind, you’d want to figure out which options you have for flying to and from your destination. Then, you could consider which routing options would appeal to you the most, which points would you need to reserve specific flights, and how to get the points needed to book those specific flights. Let’s take the example of a traveler from Toronto who wants to travel to South Africa and starts in Johannesburg. In this scenario, you’d enter” YYZ” and “JNB” in the” From” and” To” fields, respectively. You might need to conduct multiple searches if you’re looking at a city that serves multiple airports because FlightConnections currently only supports individual airports and does not support IATA’s metropolitan codes for cities with co-terminal airports ( for example, NYC, TYO, LON ). FlightConnections defaults to the” 1 Stop” search mode, which shows you a plethora of one-stop routing options for your journey to South Africa because there are no direct flights between these two cities. You’ll see these routings displayed on the world map, as well as on the left- side informational panel, where they’re listed in the order of the itinerary’s duration from shortest to longest. The shortest route requires taking Air Canada or United’s route to New York ( EWR ), then taking United’s direct flight to Johannesburg. Cathay Pacific through Hong Kong, Egyptair through Cairo, Turkish Airlines through Istanbul, and many others are also displayed on the map, which also includes those options. As you scroll through these options, you might find some of them particularly appealing, while others might be immediately discounted because they are n’t bookable using the miles you currently have. This brings us to the even more powerful way to use FlightConnections: filtering the searches based on alliance, airline, and class of service. 3. Filter by Alliance ( Premium Feature ) Whether you’re looking for direct flights or for possible routings between two given cities, you can use the Alliance filter, exclusive to Premium users, to tailor the search results towards whatever points currencies you may already have. For instance, if you’re planning an Aeroplan redemption, you might filter for all Star Alliance airlines, or if you’re putting together an Avios multi-carrier award, and you might want to look for Oneworld alliance flights. Let’s say a traveler from Vancouver wants to travel to Morocco and Thailand. If they’re planning to redeem Aeroplan miles for the trip, then filtering by Star Alliance will instantly show all the possible routing options on Star Alliance airlines to get to Casablanca for the first stop of the trip. Then, since our traveler wants to add a 5 000 Aeroplan stopover to Casablanca before moving on to Bangkok, they want to check if there are any direct flights to Asia. Our traveler notices that there are n’t any direct flights to Asia from Casablanca, so they enter Bangkok in the” To” field to see which Star Alliance options are available by simply placing Casablanca in the” From” field with the Star Alliance filter on the map. The results show two options with one stop: Turkish Airlines via Istanbul and Lufthansa via Frankfurt. Our traveler could now use the routing guidelines for complex Aeroplan rewards to search for award availability in their chosen class of service on the Aeroplan website. We need to figure out a way to get our traveler from Bangkok to Vancouver home in the last few days. Unfortunately, the dates they want to travel do n’t seem to align with our traveler’s schedule. Instead, they try searching for the same route, with the Star Alliance filter on, but allowing for one- stop along the way. Our traveler now has access to several appealing options, including Thai Airways and Air Canada via Sydney, ANA via Tokyo, and EVA Air via Taipei. Here’s where one flaw of FlightConnections becomes clear: after you’ve filtered by Alliance, you ca n’t filter out specific airlines. Indeed, if you try to tick or untick individual airlines using the” Airline” filter ( which we’ll also cover below ), the Alliance filter gets cleared at the same time. In the future, it would be great to see FlightConnections implement the ability to check off specific airlines in an alliance, whether it’s to add a few more partners to an existing alliance search ( such as including Etihad Airways alongside Star Alliance if you’re looking for Aeroplan awards ). 4. Filter by AirlineSpeaking of filtering by individual airlines, the Airline filter does exactly what it says: it shows you all of the flight routes operated by a specific airline. To use this feature, you do n’t even need to specify a particular origin airport. If you choose an airline from the list on the default world map and select it, all of its routes will appear, whether it’s a global airline like Air Canada, a regional airline like Canadian North, or even a 40-mile airline, which serves Alaska’s back-country. If you’re like me and enjoy looking at the route maps in the back of an airline’s in-flight magazine, you’ll also enjoy this FlightConnections feature. I know I could probably spend hours poring through all of the airlines ‘ route maps one by one. What other purposes might this feature serve besides entertaining aviation nerds? You might be interested in finding out where in the world you can fly with Etihad Airways on your upcoming Aeroplan redemption, and you can do that by filtering for Etihad Airways: 5. Filter by Class of Service ( Premium Feature ) The third filter, available only for Premium users, is for Class of Service. This feature is most useful for finding airlines and routes that offer First Class or premium economy because almost every flight these days comes with at least business class and economy class. In our Etihad example, we can quickly look for direct flights that depart from a particular city and offer a particular class to sample the best that the airline has to offer. For example, by entering” Toronto” in the” From” field and selecting the” First Class” filter, we can see which direct flights offer First Class. The Class of Service filter may not always be accurate, so the FlightConnections search results should be used as a guideline rather than a gospel approach to your aspirational trip planning. In a final note, many people these days prefer to purchase flights in premium economy in order to experience a little extra comfort on a long-haul journey while still paying a fair fare. The problem is that only a handful of airlines around the world offer premium economy, and even then, it’s usually only available with a fraction of their fleet. Thankfully, FlightConnections makes it simple to discover which direct flights from your chosen city offer a premium economy product: 6. One of the more recent features on FlightConnections is the ability to search by price. This allows you to visualize how far you can get on a certain budget for cash flights. Let’s say a traveler from Calgary wants to see how far they can travel without overextending their budget. They can then click” Price View” on the map, changing the view from” Default” to” Price,” by adding” Calgary” to the” From” field, which corresponds to the various pricing bands indicated at the lower left corner of the map. Our traveller has always wanted to go to Paris and notices that the prices seem within their budget. They can access a pricing calendar and scroll month by month to see the cheapest non-stop flights on any particular day by clicking on the orange dot for Paris. The pricing feature is currently only available for flights in economy, but it would be nice to see it in all other types of transportation as well. 7. Flight Schedules and Schedules: The final FlightConnections feature we’ll examine are the flight schedules and schedules. On the left-hand side information panel, you’ll be able to see the flight distance, flight duration, and a weekly schedule of the days of the week in which the flight is operated, when you click on a specific flight between two cities. Expanding this section allows you to look at the flight schedule at a more granular level, including flight numbers, flight arrival and departure times, and any changes in the weekly schedule throughout the upcoming months. You can use FlightConnections ‘ website to conduct a search if you’re ready to reserve a cash-only flight. From which you can then complete your booking, it directs you to a pop-up search result page powered by Kayak. However, if you’re using FlightConnections purely for informational purposes, then you’ll want to simply note down all of your potential flight and routing options to help you build your dream itinerary though the loyalty program of your choice. As a frequent flyer and frequent traveler, ConclusionFlightConnections is one of my favorites, whether I’m trying to figure out how to make a First Class dream come true or just looking at the flight networks in far-off because of pure curiosity. With a thorough understanding of the world’s airports, a comprehensive list of alliances, airlines, types of service, and prices, as well as a dedicated team that is constantly improving the service, FlightConnections is a valuable tool to have on hand when planning a trip, and I strongly advise you to get acquainted with it. Consider signing up for FlightConnections Premium by clicking the Prince of Travel affiliate link, which helps to support the website. Click this to register for FlightConnections Premium.
