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Aviation glossary

Charter airline

Also: charter carrier, charter flight, non-scheduled airline

Airlines and business

Airline selling non-scheduled flights hired by a customer, such as a tour operator, company or government, that books the whole aircraft for a trip.

What it is

On a charter, the customer does not buy individual seats but the capacity of the entire aircraft, for a single trip or a whole season, and sets the timetable. Charters are common for package holidays, sports teams, pilgrimages, corporate travel and repatriation flights.

For decades, European tour operators ran charter airlines of their own, flying holidaymakers from the north of the continent to the Mediterranean and the Canary Islands. With liberalisation and the rise of low-cost carriers, many began selling individual seats as well, and the line between charter and scheduled services became blurred.

In regulatory terms these are non-scheduled services: they are not sold under a published public timetable, and they may need specific permission from the countries they fly to.

Related terms

Scheduled serviceFlight or series of flights operated to a published timetable, open for sale to the public and repeated systematically between two or more points. Wet leaseArrangement in which one airline hires another's aircraft together with its crew, maintenance and insurance, while the lessor operates it under its own certificate. Low-cost carrierAirline built around keeping costs down to sell cheap fares: a single aircraft type, high aircraft utilisation, one cabin class and extras charged separately. AirlineCompany that carries passengers, cargo or mail by air for payment, holding an air operator certificate issued by its national aviation authority.
Whole glossary

Cite

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This page was last updated on October 9, 2026

APA

Vuelopedia. (2026, October 9). Charter airline. Retrieved October 17, 2026, from https://vuelopedia.org/en/glossary/charter-airline

MLA

“Charter airline.” Vuelopedia, Fundación Poderia, 9 Oct. 2026, vuelopedia.org/en/glossary/charter-airline. Accessed 17 Oct. 2026.

Chicago

Vuelopedia. “Charter airline.” Fundación Poderia. Last modified October 9, 2026. https://vuelopedia.org/en/glossary/charter-airline.

Harvard

Vuelopedia (2026) Charter airline. Available at: https://vuelopedia.org/en/glossary/charter-airline (Accessed: 17 October 2026).

BibTeX

@misc{vuelopedia_en_glossary_charter_airline,
  author       = {{Vuelopedia}},
  title        = {{Charter airline}},
  publisher    = {Fundación Poderia},
  year         = {2026},
  date         = {2026-10-09},
  url          = {https://vuelopedia.org/en/glossary/charter-airline},
  howpublished = {\url{https://vuelopedia.org/en/glossary/charter-airline}},
  urldate      = {2026-10-17},
  note         = {Accessed 2026-10-17}
}

Wikipedia

{{cite web |url=https://vuelopedia.org/en/glossary/charter-airline |title=Charter airline |website=Vuelopedia |publisher=Fundación Poderia |date=2026-10-09 |access-date=2026-10-17 |language=en}}

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