Travel Junkspeak Explained!

Y R U talking like this? I present a sassy glossary explaining travel terminology, so you don’t get bamboozled next time you book a flight.

I’ve always hated acronyms. Americans talk about the IRA as if it’s not the Irish terrorist organisation mentioned on British TV news every day when I was a kid. They also fly on an airline called Alcoholics Anonymous. I just remembered KPI as I was trying to think of other acronyms, and had to look it up. As memory serves me, I have apparently never done this before, and Key Performance Indicator came as news to me. So it’s not Kangaroo Penis Insertion? How are you supposed to know that I’m not talking about marsupial kinks when I say KPI?

Since I decided to become semi-expert at flying, things have been amplified nauseatingly upstream of stupidity, or should that be ANUS? I’m puzzled incessantly at the seeming sophistication, only to be fooled and flabbergasted, or PISS OFF for short. As an idiot, I knew that planes had up to four places where you can sit as a passenger; Economy, Premium Economy, Business and First classes. British Airways and Virgin Atlantic can call them World Traveller Plus and Upper Class until the cows come home, but they’re still selling three to four things. But even as an idiot, I noticed various letters written on boarding passes or booking confirmations that didn’t map onto these four categories. Why am I travelling in Y? Economy starts with an E, you twats.

That’s just the acronyms. What even is Premium Economy? Better Cheap? It’s not even cheap, it’s the seats on which anuses make companies the most profit. The more you travel, the worse it gets if you’re unprepared. So, let me start to prepare you, with my non-exhaustive edit of the A—Z of A—B:

A

Awards: These are not medals you get for putting up with awful airlines or screaming babies on red-eyes, they’re seats on planes that you can buy with points instead of a bank transfer of cash. They can also be called Rewards, and that’s what I call them. This is already getting off to a bad start. Despite being called “Awards” they do not gift them for free, they pass on taxes, fees, and carrier charges. Carrier what, you ask? See C.

B

Basic Economy: There’s another B word more suitable than Basic, but we’ll go with the one the marketing people have chosen. This is a type of booking for people who never change their clothes, or never wear any, and who are small enough to stretch out their limbs with about 20cm between their genitals and those of the person in front. For everyone else, this fare category is pointless and meaningless, and so when it says you can get from Frankfurt to Bangkok for €24, you’re better off buying a llama and showing it a map.

C

Carrier Charges: Don’t even ask, it just means a bank transfer of cash to the airline that you thought you were avoiding when you accepted your “Award”.

Code-share: This is when you book a flight to Australia on the Qantas website, and find yourself with a Boarding Pass for Emirates. Where’s the kangaroo? How is this possible? When was the last time you ordered Bose headphones and received a parcel from Sony?

D

Devaluation: This is when you heard me saying I flew around the world in Business for around 300,000 points, so you bought that many for yourself, only to see the airline now quotes a million required for the same distance, and your investment only gets you from Manchester to Gatwick. Guess what, the airline won’t refund or compensate you in any way (nor will I), and you’d have been better off investing in an NFT, whatever that is. But before I flew around the world in Business with the points I acquired, I took the gamble, there was no devaluation, and it payed off.

Direct: It’s a D double-dip, for anyone who loves the D. A Direct flight is one that can take you from Frankfurt to Bangkok via Ethiopia and Singapore. Because Direct doesn’t mean direct, it means whatever makes sense to the Star Alliance as long as you didn’t get more than 24 hours in between your many planes. No surprise safari for you, just a transfer desk. And the hope that they really did manage to transfer your suitcase all the way.

E

Elite: This one is not trying to bamboozle you; Elite means elite just like in the real world. It’s just trying to seduce you out of thousands of your hard-earned coins, in order to offer you the things you would get included in a Business class ticket that costs the same amount you spent chasing status anyway, if you’re savvy in your booking. Having Elite status with an airline usually means you spent too much on cash fares.

F

Fare Class: As already alluded to, there are often-hidden subcategories of the same physical seats, and these all have meaningless (to you) letters as names. A B D E F H J K M N P R S U V Y, as a random example I just made up, but is probably the exact assortment of fares on any given Air France flight between Paris and Dubai. There is no guaranteed consistency between airlines, but these letters determine the crafty engorgement of the ticket price, how many points you'll earn for taking the flight, and whether or not your humble derrière is deemed eligible for an upgrade, for which the airline will not accept a twinkling smile and ironed shirt as payment.

Fifth-freedom flight: This may sound meaningless and tedious to say out loud, and if you say “fifth freedom flight” out loud in certain British pubs then people will punch you in the face. But it’s useful to know. Almost all flights are boringly predictable, such as Ryanair flying from Luton to Shagaluf, where British people go from where they live, to a nearby place where they can get skin cancer, alcohol poisoning and gonorrhoea from the same beach lounger. Where do you think Swiss flies to, Mogadishu? Of course not, they fly to other rich-people cities. But fifth-freedom flights are not this; they mean that if you live in Manchester you can take Singapore Airlines to Boston, and never go anywhere near the equator. Now I’d rather go to Singapore than Boston, but that’s not the point. The point is that normal people don’t think of taking an Asian plane from Oasis to Trump, so the airline often sells it for cheap and you get to travel in civilised conditions instead of taking an American airline. There are not many of these in the world, so learn the useful ones here.

G

Gonorrhoeair: Every LCC, which means Low Cost Carrier. Just kidding.

Global Airlines. This is ludicrous project to fly A380s from the UK to the USA with a new cabin class, “Gamer Class”, where you can play video games at your seat. I wonder which letter they will pick to represent this fare class. It might never happen and I’m not interested because it all looks tacky.

H

Hidden City: This is not a flight to Atlantis, unless you fly a Boeing 737-MAX. Kidding again. A Hidden City is when it's cheaper to fly somewhere you don’t want to go than where you do want to go, via where you do want to go, to the point you might want to change where you want to go. For example, pretend it costs $400 to fly from Dallas to New York. I’d agree that any price is worth it to get you out of Dallas (not kidding this time!). But if it costs $250 to fly Dallas—New York—Boston and then $50 to take a train back to New York, and you’re on an adventure with time on your hands, then you may as well save $100 and visit a new place. Alternatively, as a risky strategy, you could leave the airport in New York, where you wanted to be, and let the seat you booked fly empty to Boston. Many things can go very wrong with this, starting with losing your luggage and ending with the airline banning you for life, but life is all about risk, so you do you.

I

IATA codes: OK, I take it all back. Have you ever flown to Sir Seewoosagur Ramgoolam International Airport in Mauritius? Try typing that name every time you clear the search fields on Google Flights. Of course it’s much easier to type in MRU. But you’d have to know MRU. Try guessing and you might assume MAU. Bad luck, you just booked a flight to Maupiti in French Polynesia, it cost you a gazillion dollars, and the Courtyard by Marriott by Bonvoy by Bye Bye will not transfer your non-refundable hotel booking over from Mauritius. At least you might get free Roaming in a French overseas territory.

IFE: This is the most useless of all; there is no need to take Entertainment and clarify that it’s In-Flight, as if they’d open the emergency door and kick you out if you wanted to watch Mamma Mia, Here We Go Again. “Not acceptable in-flight, it’s in-sea entertainment for you”. And the result is three quarters of the word WIFE. That’s how Henry VIII liked them.

J

Jamie Winging It: That’s my other category, where I write even less practical opinions about travel!

K

KPI: This sounds so stupid to me. I digress…

L

Layover: See “Direct” above. I’m not making up this nonsense, it’s the airlines, I promise. A Layover is basically not a Stopover, see S below.

M

Mistake Fare: Apparently airlines sometimes sell you London—Singapore—Sydney for £3.75. I’ve never seen this and they usually notice within a nanosecond and withdraw the offer. But you might find one of these unicorns, in which case, book it! YOLO! Bring on the kangaroos…

N

Nonstop: Again, this is not Direct. Nonstop flights are always direct, so why would airlines call them Direct? It has to be fun. Nonstop means you actually go from where you are to where you want to be, with nothing in between except Pierce Brosnan singing on the IFE. This is where the fun stops. Nonstop usually means sensible, popular and expensive. It’s time to let go. Embrace the Transfer desk. Frankly, a stop at Changi will probably be better than your actual destination.

O

Open Jaw: The fate of anyone flying a MAX over shark-infested sea? I don’t even need ChatGPT to come up with this when the terminology is so ludicrous. Imagine you fly from Heathrow to Bangkok, but you want to come back from Singapore because I told you to do so, because it’s wonderful. Don’t faff about at whatever that Bangkok airport is called. Unfortunately you can’t find a Direct Hidden City Mistake Fare in J, whatever that means (are you serious, you’re not paying attention?!). But don’t worry, there’s always boats. If you’re a “Quality Tourist”, as the local governments call you, then taking small boats between countries has nothing to do with the thing that populist politicians hate. You could visit every island in the Gulf of Thailand, find yourself drifting into Malaysia, and take a bus over the bridge to Singapore. It might feel like you’re cosplaying at being an illegal immigrant, but you’ve got money so don’t worry, it’s not at all considered controversial by the authorities. This is an Open Jaw itinerary, where you fly A to B, take any old donkey or raft from B to C, and then fly C back to A.

P

Positioning: Doggy style. Lube yourself up, I’m coming in to land. Even more fun than Open Jaw! If you don’t love this stuff like I do, you might be better off doom-scrolling far-right propaganda that pretends to be centrist common sense. What is a Positioning flight? Surely every flight is positioning, otherwise why bother? Whereas Open Jaw only involved places you planned on visiting, a Positioning flight might take you somewhere you never dreamt of gracing. Say you want to go to Bali and clog that paradise island with even more traffic and sewage. Sure, I did it too (I’m here now, and who knows, I might need the toilet soon!). There are no Avios deals to be had. Boo. But wait, what if I told you that you could use your Scandinavian SAS points to fly KLM Amsterdam—Singapore—Bali? You get to faff about in Changi! Yay! But wait, Amsterdam? That’s a place where you are not and do not expect to be. Welcome aboard your London City to Schiphol positioning flight. That’s right, British person. You did that ridiculous Scandinavian Millionaire challenge, and now you’re taking a Dutch airline to Bali via another place that’s not in Indonesia either. It’s called Positioning and listen to me; it’s all part of the fun.

Q

Queue: What you do at the airport when you don’t have Status or fly Business.

Qualifying Miles/Segments: The fiery hoops through which you must jump to acquire Status, and of course they usually cost more than non-Qualifying Miles and Segments in different fare categories. What is a Segment, you ask? We’re still at Q…

R

Redemption: When you spend all that money to acquire as many points as necessary, you find the closest flight at a vaguely possible time for you to fly, on a not-too-awful airline, at a departure time that won’t quite kill you, and you click and click and click on the airline’s buggy website until you finally get to the payment screen, whereby you’re shocked that the taxes, fees and carrier charges are so much higher than you expected. That’s it, pressing ‘Pay now’ means you have your very own Award/Reward Redemption. You did it!

S

There’s a lot of thessse…

Saver Award: These are the redemptions you would’ve taken if you read all my advice, instead of the significantly more widely available “Flex” or “Plus” Awards, or whatever name the airline in question uses as a euphemism for “Overpriced, may as well pay cash and earn points”.

Segments: If you want to fly your gold from Zurich to Mogadishu, and give it away to poor people, you’re going to need a lot of segments in between, as we’ve already learned because there’s no way you’ll find a Nonstop flight. Zurich to Heathrow might be the first segment, then Heathrow to Johannesburg, Johannesburg to Addis Ababa, and maybe, if you’re lucky, you can now board a flight from one of the handful of destinations served from MGQ. That’s the IATA code for a place that doesn’t have a ‘Q’ in its name. WTQ.

Stopover: Previously you landed in Ethiopia for a Layover on your way to Bangkok. This time, due to the inconvenience of flying to a place that’s not rich or popular, you’re going to have to wait more than 24 hours for your international connection. It’s now considered a Stopover, and you get time to see the animals (I’m talking about the taxi drivers who will harass you as you adjust to the humidity when the airport doors open. Bad luck, there’s no metro system here.).

T

Transferable Points: If you collect Avios, you get Avios. With an Avios-earning credit card, you get Avios. But how are you supposed to fly Singapore Airlines with that? That’s where American Express, and others, come in. Collect Amex’s special Membership Rewards points (they probably call them ASMR) and you can choose to transfer them to either your Avios account, or your Singapore Airlines account, depending on the available partners in the programme. Ask your non-binary friend to explain the concept if it’s still unclear.

U

Upgrade: This does not come for free any more. Upgrades are usually at least as expensive as buying a cash/Reward seat in the class above. I have never upgraded, it seems preposterous. Unless your situation wildly changes. Like, for example, you invested in something unethical with a Swiss bank, and the amount of gold you received in return is so much more than you expected when you booked your philanthropic segments all the way to Mogadishu, that you now exceed the luggage allowance of Y. It’s time to move to U, because the excess baggage pricing at the airport costs more than the upgrade.

V

Variant: A Boeing 777 is rarely just a Boeing 777. I assume you’re getting this by now. It’s not fun if it’s not over-complicated. Why do you think it all costs you so much time and money? A 777 is usually a 777-200, or a 777-300ER, or a 777X, because 300 becomes X. Understood? Before you dismiss this as uninteresting, there are many who did not live to tell you that the difference between a 737-800 and a 737 MAX-8, which look almost identical from the outside, is life and death. On a less serious note, the difference between a 777-300ER and a 777-200 with British Airways might mean having Linda climbing over your feet as you’re trying to sleep, instead of closing the door on your own private suite, because different variants sometimes have wildly different seats. “Sorry”, says Linda, she’ll try not to wake you up next time you’re taking your gold on a 13-hour overnight flight to South Africa.

W

Wet Lease: OK, you’re bored now. Let’s wake you up with something sexual. Wet Leasing is when the sexy flight attendant drenches you in a shower of juices from their genitals… You’d be forgiven for believing me at this point, but alas. Have you ever heard of Dan Air? It’s not fake, it’s a real airline and you could be flying it next time you book with Lufthansa. This is “Wet Leasing”, when an airline pays another one to do their job because they ran out of planes. They’ll be sure to tell you this is what’s going to happen, just read paragraph 17 of the small print when you’ve already spent upwards of 43 hours on Google Flights researching for this booking.

X

X: Not Twitter, this apparently means a Connection. A Connection is the thing between two Segments. I’d have put it in C, but why not X? Never accept less than an hour between flights at a civilised airport, and never less than three hours at Heathrow.

Y

Y: I’m still asking this question. Y means a full-price Economy fare, no discounts. Y would U?

Z

Z: That’s it, we’ve got to the end and it’s all explained and there’s nothing left to complicate things further? Wrong. Z is not said “Zed” or “Zee” in aviation, but rather “Zulu”. Is this something to do with Swiss people using euphemisms to get their excess gold through South Africa? Maybe that as well, but in all other cases it’s the alphabet used to avoid confusion when talking on the phone to airline staff. Seriously, the objective of the airline is to avoid confusion? Do me a favour, move me from Yankee to Charlie, you bunch of Tango Whiskey Alpha Tangos…

You might think that, while this is all confusing, at least the helpful airline staff will guide you through the complexities? Well here’s one more bombshell. Most airline staff don’t know all of this either. Not even the autistic ones know every combination of letters ever assembled. I once saw a member of Qantas check-in staff merrily send someone’s luggage off to DUB, only for the meticulous passenger to notice in the nick of time and point out that Dubai airport code is DXB. At least, if you don’t remember these codes, try and remember to pack clean underwear in your carry-on, otherwise you might have to go and fetch it from Dublin.

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