Expires in hours
Whether an Aircraft Is Actually Free
Every other answer on this site outlives this one. An operator saying an aircraft is open is telling the truth about a moment, and the moment is short because other brokers are asking the same operator the same question.
- What the answer is
- That a named operator has an aircraft with no trip against it for the dates asked about.
- How long it stays true
- Hours. Sometimes a working day, occasionally less than one, and never as long as the person asking expects.
- What happens when it stops being true
- The quote it was part of stops meaning anything. The desk asks again, and the answer that comes back is a new answer rather than a confirmation of the old one.
Why it is so short
Because nobody has been asked to hold anything. A broker asking an operator what is open is asking a question, not placing a booking, and the operator is under no obligation to keep the aircraft idle while somebody decides.
Two or three brokers may be asking about the same aircraft on the same morning, on behalf of people who have no idea the others exist. The first one to confirm gets it.
What a hold actually is
Some operators will hold an aircraft for a stated period once a trip is close to firm. That is a real thing and it is worth asking for, and it is the operator's to give rather than this desk's to promise.
This desk does not describe an aircraft as held unless an operator has said the word, and when one has, the quote carries the time the hold runs out.
What this means for how a quote reads
A quote from this desk carries the date and time it was assembled, and says that availability was true at that moment. That is not a disclaimer bolted on: it is the single most important property of the number.
The alternative, a quote that reads as though the aircraft is waiting, is how somebody ends up planning around an aircraft that went to somebody else two days ago.
What happens when it expires
The desk asks again. What comes back may be the same operator with the same aircraft, the same operator with a different one, or nothing at all, and the price moves with it.
There is no version of this where an expired answer can be honored by anybody, because the thing it described has gone.
Answers that expire in hours, one of three shelf lives in what a quote rests on