Elevate Your Travel With 'Fifth Freedom' Flying

Late last night, Singapore Airlines picked up yet another prize: the Wanderlust Readers' Award for world's best airline 2023.

- SIMON CALDER

Yet you need not fly anywhere near southeast Asia to enjoy the best inflight service on the planet: try northwest England to Texas instead

“SQ”, as many aviation people know the airline, connects Manchester with Houston three times a week. The link is particularly popular with oil people who fly from Aberdeen to Manchester on Loganair then settle in for 10 hours of the Singapore experience en route to America’s oil hub.

Heading instead for India? You can fly from London Heathrow to Mumbai with a carrier whose slogan is “Fly the Flag”. In this case, the ensign bears the Canadian maple leaf.

And a trans-Mediterranean hop from Malta to Cyprus? The only nonstop choice is for wide-bodied comfort with a top Gulf airline.

These are among the many possibilities of “fifth-freedom” flying – which means you travel on a plane belonging to an airline from neither your origin nor destination. The practice is more widespread than you might think, and can confer many benefits on the traveller. And it goes back almost eight decades.

Late in 1944, towards the end of the Second World War, the airlines and governments of the Allies gathered in Chicago to try to establish some common rules for international aviation.