Your flight, prepared
Before you fly, three things decide how smooth the trip goes: the conditions printed on your ticket, the baggage limits published by the carrier, and the airport timeline you follow on the day. This reference collects the published rules of major airlines and turns them into a checklist you can work through step by step.
The ticket is a contract of carriage: it fixes your route, your baggage allowance and the fees for changes — the booking screen only shows the price.
Every airline ticket carries a fare basis code and a set of conditions that determine what you may change, refund or carry. Those conditions are published on the carrier's ticket conditions page and vary by fare family: basic economy fares usually forbid voluntary changes, while flexible fares allow them for a published fee or at no charge.
Published fees fall into a few recurring types: change or reissue fees, checked baggage fees, seat selection fees, and airport service fees. Full-service carriers on long-haul routes often bundle one checked bag into the fare, while low-cost carriers price each service separately.
The practical rule is to read the conditions page before paying, not after. Two fares on the same route can differ by tens of euros in price and by an order of magnitude in flexibility.
Carry-on limits are set in centimetres and kilograms per cabin; checked limits are set in pieces and weight per passenger.
Hand baggage rules are the tighter of the two: most short-haul carriers publish a frame around 40–55 × 35–40 × 20–25 cm and 7–10 kg, while long-haul full-service carriers often allow one personal item plus one larger cabin bag. The frame is enforced at the gate by a metal sizer, and oversize cabin bags are tagged and checked into the hold at no extra cost in most published policies.
Checked baggage is usually expressed as a number of pieces with a weight cap — commonly one piece at 23 kg in economy and two at 23 kg in business on intercontinental routes. Pieces above the allowance, or above the weight cap, are charged as excess baggage at published per-kilogram or per-piece rates.
Restricted items split into two lists: prohibited entirely (flammables, compressed gases, most lithium batteries above 160 Wh in checked baggage) and quantity-restricted (liquids, aerosols, lithium power banks, which must travel in the cabin). The two lists are published by each carrier and by the civil aviation authority of the departure country.
The airport sequence is fixed: documents, check-in, screening, passport control where applicable, then boarding by group.
Check-in is the first checkpoint with a hard deadline. Online check-in typically opens 24 to 48 hours before departure and closes 60 to 90 minutes before; airport check-in desks close earlier, often 45 to 60 minutes before departure for international flights. Missing the desk closing time is one of the most common reasons a booked seat goes unused.
After check-in, hand baggage goes through screening: liquids, laptops and large electronics are separated according to the published instructions, shoes and belts may be removed depending on the country. Screening is where most delays happen, and the recommended arrival buffer — two hours for short-haul, three for long-haul — exists to absorb them.
Boarding is called by group or zone rather than by row on most carriers. Groups are printed on the boarding pass; boarding usually closes 15 to 20 minutes before departure, and the jet bridge door is closed at the published departure time.
Each step below has a published window; the failure column names the most common way passengers miss it.
Four checkpoints, four different published frames.
Each figure on this page points back to the type of published document — conditions of carriage, airport passenger guide, or security directive — where it is normally found.