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Aviation glossary

Scheduled service

Also: scheduled flight, regular service, scheduled air service

Airports

Flight or series of flights operated to a published timetable, open for sale to the public and repeated systematically between two or more points.

What it is

What makes a service scheduled is not the size of the aircraft or the type of airline but its nature: a timetable is published, anyone can buy a ticket and flights recur regularly, even when demand on a particular day is low. This sets it apart from charter or non-scheduled flights, which a tour operator, club or company hires for a specific trip.

International scheduled services depend mainly on bilateral air services agreements, which set out which airlines may fly between two countries and often between which cities and how often. Industry statistics usually separate scheduled from non-scheduled traffic. Many airlines run both, selling seats on their scheduled routes while also hiring out aircraft for charter work.

On Vuelopedia

An airport page on Vuelopedia brings together the airlines and destinations served from it.

Related terms

Charter airlineAirline selling non-scheduled flights hired by a customer, such as a tour operator, company or government, that books the whole aircraft for a trip. Freedoms of the airSet of rights a country grants to foreign airlines to overfly its territory, land there, or carry passengers and cargo to, from and beyond it. AirlineCompany that carries passengers, cargo or mail by air for payment, holding an air operator certificate issued by its national aviation authority. Flight numberCombination of an airline code and a number of up to four digits that identifies a particular air service in timetables, tickets and airports. Coordinated airportAirport where capacity falls short of demand, so landing or taking off there requires a slot allocated by an independent coordinator.
Whole glossary

Cite

To cite this page in academic work, an article or Wikipedia, choose the style and copy the reference. The access date is today.

This page was last updated on October 9, 2026

APA

Vuelopedia. (2026, October 9). Scheduled service. Retrieved October 16, 2026, from https://vuelopedia.org/en/glossary/scheduled-service

MLA

“Scheduled service.” Vuelopedia, Fundación Poderia, 9 Oct. 2026, vuelopedia.org/en/glossary/scheduled-service. Accessed 16 Oct. 2026.

Chicago

Vuelopedia. “Scheduled service.” Fundación Poderia. Last modified October 9, 2026. https://vuelopedia.org/en/glossary/scheduled-service.

Harvard

Vuelopedia (2026) Scheduled service. Available at: https://vuelopedia.org/en/glossary/scheduled-service (Accessed: 16 October 2026).

BibTeX

@misc{vuelopedia_en_glossary_scheduled_service,
  author       = {{Vuelopedia}},
  title        = {{Scheduled service}},
  publisher    = {Fundación Poderia},
  year         = {2026},
  date         = {2026-10-09},
  url          = {https://vuelopedia.org/en/glossary/scheduled-service},
  howpublished = {\url{https://vuelopedia.org/en/glossary/scheduled-service}},
  urldate      = {2026-10-16},
  note         = {Accessed 2026-10-16}
}

Wikipedia

{{cite web |url=https://vuelopedia.org/en/glossary/scheduled-service |title=Scheduled service |website=Vuelopedia |publisher=Fundación Poderia |date=2026-10-09 |access-date=2026-10-16 |language=en}}

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