The Airplane Configuration

Travel agencies cam select airplane seats for their clients by looking at a seat map. Seat map shows the configuration of an airplane. The configuration of a plane is the layout of seats and rows identifications and the locations of the plane's kitchens, closets and lavatories.

When selecting seats, we use the seat map to identify seat locations and availability. when reading a seat map, each row assigned a number (the horizontal seats carry the same number, starting with the lowest row number from the front of the aircraft till the biggest number at the tail of the aircraft). While each seat is assigned a letter (starting with a,b,c,............vertically, according to the number of seats which could reach ten seats or even more) starting from the left side faces towards the front of the aircraft.

Most passengers have certain preferences about where they want to sit. A common seating preference is an aisle or window seat. The middle passenger if often squeezed between two other people, making for an uncomfortable ride. Airline generally assign the middle seats only after all the aisle and window seats have been taken, unless two seats together are requested.

Seats in first and business class are more comfortable, because they are different in dimension. However they are some trades when assigning travelers to seats in the economy compartment.

Airports Terminals

A one or two character airport terminal code displayed after an airport/city code in flight line entry indicates the terminal from which the flight departs and/or arrivals. these codes are assigned by IATA and may appear in both direct and connecting flight entries. An (*) following a carrier code indicates that the airline serve more than one terminal. Please connect the airline for more details.


Departure and arrival times:


All times are local times. The international time calculator section shows the differences between local times and GMT (Greenwich Mean Time).

Build Operate and Transfer

Building airports through investments programs:

In view of airport needs to keep up with technological development and the research and development, which can stretch the government budgets as well as building and developing airports at the same time. Egypt for instance has encouraged the national and foreigner investors to enter that field through the "Build Operate and Transfer" (BOT) system.


Contracts were concluded with investors to build airports in various areas of Egypt such as Marsa Alam, Al Alamain, Al Wahat, Al Farafra, Ras Sidr and others all over the whole world.

Actually it is a management contract system where the owner-ship remains with the government and the contractors take responsibility for the day to day operation of the airport. The contractor will pay an annual management fee usually related to the performance of the airport. Investment will remain the responsibility of the government owner, while the overall economic risk will be shared between the owner and the management company.

Currency Conversion Rates

Fares in any tariff manual are published in Neutral Unit of Construction (NUC) and local currencies of countries of commencement of travel (origin), using the IATA three currency codes.

Sometimes ago and before fluctuation of different international currencies, fares were published in US Dollar and local currencies. IATA found it to stick to the US Dollar due to its instability. It came out with units which are to be used for the construction of fares, so called Fare Construction Unit (FCU).

In 1987, IATA decided to get rid of the (FCU) system due to the complications that were found in its application. That unit was finally replaced by the  Neutral Unit of Construction (NUC) which first applied on 1st July 1989.








However the   Neutral Unit of Construction (NUC) cannot be considered as a currency and cannot be quoted to passengers unless it is converted to local currency IATA Rate Of  Exchange (ROE) as follows:

 

Construction Fare in NUC X ROE = Local Currency Fare

The Hub and Spoke System

When the airline industry was deregulated in the year 1978, a period of intense competition for passengers began. among other things, airlines were pressured to increase the number of cities they served, without increasing fares. However to add new point to point flights, an airline needed to invest substantial funds to buy new aircraft. To solve this problem, the airlines adopted a route system called "The Hub and Spoke System".

Under this system passengers are transported to an intermediate point, called a "hub" to board planes to their final destinations. To understand the hub and spoke system, imagine a bicycle wheel with numerous spokes leading from the hub or center. The wheel's hub is the major city in where passengers can board flights to various destinations. Each spoke is a route from the hub to one of these different destination points.

The hub and spoke system enables an airline to serve the maximum number of passengers while still maintaining a competitive fare structure. a flight that requires passengers to change planes at the intermediate point between the original boarding point and the final destination, with no stopover allowed is called a "connection". A point to point flight that does not require a change of aircraft is called a "direct flight", regardless of the number of stops.

The airport terminals where passengers board airline flights are leased by the airlines. Thus in most cases all the flights operated by a particular carrier take off and land at the same terminal. If a connection involves different carriers, the passengers must change terminals to board their continuing flights. One important benefit of the hub and spoke system is minimizing the number of inter-terminal connections