This page is intended for visitors to the USA or Canada from Britain. It may also apply to some extent to visitors to the USA or Canada from other countries. This page limits itself to considering scheduled flights. Charter flights are likely to be less reliable and to provide less comfort and a lower quality of service than scheduled flights, and to provide a poorer backup service in the event of problems with planes.
Many charter flights operate at extremely inconvenient times, only on certain days of the week.
Because of the type of aircraft they use, some charter flights have re-fuelling stops, making their flight times considerably lengthier. In addition, many of the planes used for charter flights have their rows of seats positioned very close to each other, giving very restricted leg room to anyone of average or greater than average height. Quite a few years ago we flew on several occasions with Continental Airlines since they had a direct flight to Denver and their prices were competitive. However, I must say that in my opinion at that time they scored rather poorly on most of the above criteria. They may have improved since.