In the unofficial “Freedoms of the Air,” the fifth freedom is the ability for a carrier of Country A to carry passengers on an international route solely between Country B and Country C when on a multi-leg flight that involves Country A. This is usually because of a necessitated stopover — the distance between Country A and Country C is too far, so a stopover is made in Country B. Other times, it’s to help combine traffic for multiple countries, such as Brussels Airlines West Africa routes. The carrier is allowed to carry passengers between A-B, A-C, and B-C.
An example of this is the Kangaroo route between London and Sydney. This route is too long for any carrier to fly nonstop, so historically, a stop has been made somewhere in Asia. British Airways flies London to Sydney via Singapore, and carries passengers from London to Singapore, London to Sydney, and Singapore to Sydney. That last example is a fifth-freedom route, since a UK-based carrier is carrying passengers between Singapore and Australia.
HOW CAN THIS BENEFIT ME?
Often times, fifth-freedom carriers will serve a certain destination pair with much larger aircraft than the home carriers will. Let’s go back to the example of Auckland – Sydney. This route is served by Australia-based carriers like Virgin Australia and Qantas as well as Air New Zealand. The aircraft on this route include narrow-bodies like the Boeing 737, Airbus A320, and some Boeing 767 and Boeing 777 on certain flights.
However, it’s also served by Dubai-based Emirates, which flies the route with its Airbus A380 and Chile-based LAN, which flies the route with its Airbus A340. Emirates tags Sydney-Auckland to the end of its Dubai-Sydney flight, while LAN tags Auckland-Sydney to the end of its Santiago-Auckland flight.
If you want to fly between Sydney and Auckland, you can book a ticket on Emirates or LAN, even though neither is based in either country. Fifth freedoms are how I flew the Emirates A380 in First Class between Hong Kong and Bangkok (for only a few hundred dollars more than coach!). Emirates is partners with Korean Air, which is a partner of Chase Ultimate Rewards. You can book the AKL-SYD flight in Business for 25,000 Ultimate Rewards points transferred to Korean Skypass one-way, or 37,500 points in First. LAN’s long-haul business class is also a great product, and their A340s are much wider than the Boeing 767s they fly on most North American routes. Lastly, because LAN is a member of OneWorld, you can use your American AAdvantage miles or British Airways Avios to fly them (and LAN doesn’t charge fuel surcharges)!
Earlier this year, I needed a random one-way segment from Hanoi to Bangkok. Neither is a OneWorld hub, so I couldn’t use Avios without a connection (which would raise the price, as well as the travel time). The cheapest ticket was on AirAsia, but for $5 more, I could buy a ticket on Qatar Airways. Hmm, an A320 on a low-cost carrier that will charge me for everything, or a Boeing 777 on “the world’s 5-star airline?” Easy decision.
Lastly, fifth-freedom flights can give you the ability to check out a carrier you otherwise would not usually fly. Bangkok-Hong Kong is replete with unique airlines from Africa, Middle East, and Indian Ocean areas (as you’ll see below).
WHAT ABOUT OTHER CITIES?
My “secret tool” for learning about fifth freedom carriers on a route I want to fly is Google.
Just go to Google.com and type in”flights from AAA to BBB,” where AAA and BBB are the airport codes of the cities you want to fly. For Sydney to Auckland, you’ll see some usual suspects, plus LAN, Emirates, and China Airlines.
One problem here is that if you make “AAA” an airport within the USA, Google will return a slightly different looking results page, which isn’t as straightforward as before. For example,”flights from LAX to LHR” returns this, with a Lufthansa codeshare (which is actually the United flight) and Transaero codeshare (which is the Virgin Atlantic flight):
The fix to this is to just search the reverse, to make the origin outside the USA: “flights from LHR to LAX,” which shows the true airlines flying this route (the usual suspects, but also Air New Zealand, which flies LAX to LHR after it’s flight from Auckland). Often times, the flight FROM the US is simply one flight number off of the flight TO the US.
One slight drawback to this is that Google will only return the upcoming schedule of flights, so if a route is seasonal for an airline, it may not show up.
SO CAN I FLY QANTAS FROM NEW YORK TO LA?
Aha, so you’ve somehow discovered Qantas 108 (it’s delayed again today, living up to its name as “QF 1-oh-late”). Unfortunately, this isn’t a valid fifth freedom route, because New York and LA are in the same country. Qantas is only allowed to fly passengers on this route who are continuing on to a Qantas flight to Australia.
It’s the same situation down under, where United has a flight between Sydney and Melbourne, but can only carry passengers that it brought from the United States on flights from Los Angeles or San Francisco. All of this is due to rules against “cabotage” — a foreign carrier may not carry passengers solely between two domestic points.
However, British Airways flies routes within South Africa, but those are actually operated by Comair, an airline based in South Africa as an affiliate of British Airways. These intra-South Africa flights are a great use of Avios!
THEN WHAT ARE SOME INTERESTING FIFTH-FREEDOM ROUTES?
This isn’t an exhaustive list, just ones I think are interesting (due to interesting routes or cool aircraft on that route, in addition to being able to earn/burn useful miles). Keeping up-to-date is tough, as I try to look at route maps every few months, but if you know of a fifth freedom that’s not on the list, let me know! In future posts, I’ll talk about how you can use these routes to maximize award redemptions with these routes.
Last Updated: May 29, 2013 (Thai LAX-KIX, Ethiopian LFW-GIG-GRU-LFW)
OneWorld
airberlin
Abu Dhabi – Phuket
British Airways
Singapore – Sydney
Colombo-Male
Doha – Bahrain
Abu Dhabi – Muscat
Antigua – Saint Kitts
Antigua – Tobago
Antigua – Punta Cana
Antigua – San Juan
Nassau – Grand Cayman
Nassau – Providenciales
Saint Lucia – Port of Spain
Saint Lucia – Grenada
Head For Points points out that you can redeem these routes with Avios at the Reward Saver Level for a cheaper way to sample British Airways in a premium cabin.
British Airways affiliate Sun-Air of Scandinavia flies the following routes, redeemable at the Reward Saver Level:
Aalborg – Oslo
Aarhus – Gothenburg
Aarhus – Oslo
Aarhus – Stockholm (BMA)
Billund – Bergen
Billund – Brussels
Billund – Düsseldorf
Billund – Munich
Billund – Oslo
Billund – Stockholm (BMA)
While not necessarily fifth freedom routes, British Airways affiliate Comair flies domestic routes within South Africa that can be booked with Avios.
Cathay Pacific
Vancouver – New York JFK
Bangkok – Singapore
Bangkok – Mumbai
Bangkok – Delhi
Bangkok – Karachi
Bangkok – Colombo
Singapore – Colombo
Taipei – Tokyo
Taipei – Seoul
Taipei – Osaka
Taipei – Fukuoka
Iberia
San Salvador – Guatemala City
LAN
(LAN is based in Chile, but has subsidiaries in Peru, Argentina, Colombia, and Ecuador, so I don’t consider routes in those countries)
Auckland – Sydney
Madrid – Frankfurt
Miami – Punta Cana
Miami – Caracas
(discontinued) New York – Toronto (I mention this because it would’ve been SWEET with Avios)
Malaysia Airlines
Los Angeles – Tokyo
QANTAS
Singapore – London (until April 2013)
Singapore – Frankfurt (until April 2013)
Dubai – London (from April 2013 onward)
Royal Jordanian
Bangkok – Kuala Lumpur
Bangkok – Hong Kong
Qatar Airways (expected OneWorld in October 2013)
Buenos Aires – Sao Paulo
Budapest – Zagreb
Baku – Tbilisi
Bucharest – Sofia
Johannesburg – Maputo
Kigali – Entebbe
Kuala Lumpur – Phuket
Bangkok – Hanoi – trip report
Bangkok – Ho Chi Minh City
Singapore – Denpasar
SriLankan (expected OneWorld in 2013)
Bangkok – Hong Kong
Bangkok – Guangzhou
Bangkok – Shanghai
Bangkok – Beijing
Star Alliance
Air Canada
Buenos Aires – Santiago
Air China
Madrid – Sao Paulo
Munich – Athens
Air New Zealand
Los Angeles – Rarotonga, Cook Islands
Los Angeles – London
London – Hong Kong (discontinued March 2013)
Brussels Airlines
(by no means do I think this one is exhaustive, since they have an interesting African route map, but these ones actually showed as bookable for the future)
Abidjan – Monrovia
Bamako -> Ouagadougou (only one-way. and you’re doing a disservice to yourself if you fly this and don’t hike the Dogon Country in Mali, near the border with Burkina)
Freetown -> Banjul
Conakry -> Banjul
COPA
San José (Costa Rica) – Guatemala City
Managua – Guatemala City
San José – Managua
San Pedro Sula – San José
Tegucigalpa – San José
EgyptAir
Bangkok – Kuala Lumpur
Ethiopian
Lomé – Rio de Janeiro (787) begins July 1, 2013 (via GRU eastbound)
Lomé – Sao Paulo (787) begins July 1, 2013 (via GIG westbound)
Bamako – Dakar
Bujumbura – Kigali
Cotonou – Abidjan
Malabo – Douala
Kigali – Entebbe
Delhi – Hangzhou, China
Bangkok – Hong Kong (until June 17, 2013)
Bangkok – Kuala Lumpur
Cairo – Stockholm
EVA Air (expected Star Alliance member in 2013, current partner with United)
Bangkok – Amsterdam
Bangkok – London Heathrow
Bangkok – Vienna
Lufthansa
Ho Chi Minh City – Bangkok
Kuala Lumpur – Bangkok
Baku – Ashgabat
Singapore Airlines
Manchester – Munich
Los Angeles – Tokyo (A380)
San Francisco – Seoul
San Francisco – Hong Kong (A380 until March 24, 2013)
Houston – Moscow
New York – Frankfurt (A380 resumes on March 25, 2013)
Sao Paulo – Barcelona (no fuel surcharge from Brazil, and only 59K SQ miles one-way for First)
Dubai – Cairo
South African Airways
Accra – Abidjan
Washington DC – Dakar
SWISS
Dubai – Muscat
THAI
Karachi – Muscat
Hong Kong – Seoul
Taipei – Seoul
Taipei – Hong Kong
Los Angeles – Seoul
Los Angeles – Osaka (KIX)
Turkish
Bishkek – Ulaanbaatar
Bahrain – Muscat
Djibouti – Mogadishu (which led to one of the more interesting Mileage Run deals)
Ho Chi Minh City – Bangkok
Sao Paulo – Buenos Aires
United
Koror (Palau) – Manila
Koror – Yap (Micronesia)
Tokyo – Guam (not really a 5th freedom, but still interesting. United has an extensive hub at Narita that serves other Asian destinations)
The Island Hopper: Honolulu to Guam via Majuro, Kwajalein, and the Caroline Islands
Kuwait – Bahrain
Dubai – Doha. In case Emirates and Qatar go bankrupt or something.
Skyteam
Air France
Los Angeles – Papeete
China Airlines
Rome – Delhi
Amsterdam – Bangkok
Brisbane – Auckland
Sydney – Auckland
Singapore – Surabaya
Hong Kong – Jakarta
Hong Kong – Bangkok
China Eastern
Colombo – Malé
Delta
Amsterdam – Mumbai
Tokyo – Koror (Palau)
Tokyo – Saipan (not really a 5th freedom but the only carrier on this route)
Delta also has a hub at Tokyo Narita for flights into Asia.
Kenya Airways
Bangkok – Hong Kong (ends March 30th, 2013)
Dubai – Hong Kong (begin March 31st, 2013)
Bangkok – Guangzhou
Koninklijke Luchtvaart Maatschappij (KLM)
Dammam – Kuwait
Doha – Muscat
Singapore – Denpasar
Kuala Lumpur – Jakarta
Korean Air
Los Angeles – Sao Paulo
Los Angeles – Tokyo (ends March 30th, 2013)
Honolulu – Tokyo (begins March 31st, 2013)
Vienna – Zurich
Mileage Earning Non-Alliance Carriers
Emirates (partners with Korean Air, JAL, and Alaska Airlines)
Buenos Aires – Rio de Janeiro
Colombo – Singapore
Colombo – Malé
Kuala Lumpur – Melbourne
Singapore – Melbourne
Bangkok – Sydney
Bangkok – Hong Kong (A380)
Singapore – Brisbane
Brisbane – Auckland
Sydney – Auckland (A380)
Melbourne – Auckland (A380)
Sydney – Christchurch
Harare – Lusaka
Accra – Abidjan
Malta – Larnaca
Etihad (partners with American Airlines)
Beijing – Nagoya
Singapore – Brisbane
Jet Airways (partners with American, United, and US Airways)
Newark – Brussels
Toronto – Brussels
