Before deciding how you’re going to send your shipment, you need to know if there are flights available. With WebCargo’s Schedules tool, you can find all of this information without calling each airline or leaving the platform. All you need is your origin, destination, and departure date. If you have a specific airline you want to search for, you can do that too.
Watch the below video, or read the following article to find out how to use WebCargo’s scheduling tool.
1. Enter origin, destination, airline, and date
Once you’ve logged into your account, click on the Air tab and then the sub-tab Schedules. Once here, you can enter your origin (From), destination (To), preferred airline, whether you want a wide or narrow-body aircraft, and choose a date. Notice too that you can choose freighter-only vessels and exclude trucking. Once your information has been entered, click ‘Search.’
2. Organising your search results
Once the results have loaded, you will first see the best routes for direct flights to your destination.
Each row contains a different flight schedule. You can see the different airlines, the days in which these schedules are available, the departure and arrival times, the plane model, maximum dimensions, and whether the plane is a narrow or wide body. We’ll explain what each column means later.
You can also see another section located underneath the direct flights section called Stop routings. These are options available with one or more stopovers. Here’s an example:
Notice that for this particular journey, there are two legs. These are highlighted above, the first leg being LHR - LIS and the second LIS - BCN, showing a stopover in Lisbon. As you move through the pages using the arrows at the bottom, you will be able to see flights with more than 1 routing, too.
Tip: Airline schedules are updated automatically every Monday through API integration with OAG. Any schedules that we get from airlines that aren’t included in this automatic update should be added by us manually to the WebCargo news section under your account.
If you don’t see the dates requested, it may be because the airline is yet to provide this schedule, but that doesn’t mean that you can’t book this shipment. Here, you will need to contact the airline to confirm their availability.
3. Understanding each column
Airline: shows which airline the schedules are from
Itinerary: shows the route which the flight(s) will take. Remember, if the flight has more than 1 stop routing, the information will be on different rows for each leg.
Days: Each day of the week is represented by a number, Monday being 1, Tuesday 2, and so on. The number under the days' column shows which days of the week this schedule is available.
To make it easier, here is how it looks:
1. Monday, 2. Tuesday, 3. Wednesday, 4. Thursday, 5. Friday, 6. Saturday, 7. Sunday
Therefore, if you have 12345 under days, it means that this schedule is relevant for all weekdays, but not the weekend. If you have 67 under days the schedule is available on Saturdays and Sundays.
Departure: the time your flight will leave the destination
Arrival: the time your flight will arrive
Flight: your flight number
Plane: the model of the plane flying
Dimensions: maximum dimensions possible for shipping cargo
Type: whether the plane is a narrow or wide body
Validity: when the shown schedule is valid from and until.
4. Using schedules when searching for rates
Schedule information is also viewable on the search results page when selecting a quote. You will be able to see at the top of each company’s rates results when you see these icons:
Hover the mouse over either of these icons and you will see all of the flight information you can find within the Flight Schedules tool but in a pop-out.
Click on either icon and you will be taken to the schedules page, where the airline you have chosen will automatically be mapped to the page. This means you will only see schedules from this airline.
Tip: Clicking on the first icon will bring you results with Schedules for passenger aircraft and freighters. Clicking on the plane icon with the ‘f’ will bring up Schedules for freighters only.
Don’t worry about losing your previous information, when you go back to the rates search results page, you will still be able to see the flight details previously entered.
Not sure where to send your shipment? Click here to view how to use our Airport Maps tool to see the closest airports to your destination.