Sector
One flight from take-off to landing. A day's duty is counted in sectors, and low-cost pay is often earned per sector.
Definition
A sector is a single flight between one departure and one landing. A duty may contain one sector or six; a rotation is a series of sectors that starts and ends at base. In North America the same unit is called a leg or segment, and in scheduling it is sometimes written as a flight number pair such as LGW-BCN.
What it means for you
Sectors are the currency of short-haul life: they define how many boardings, services and cabin-secure checks you run in a day and, at many low-cost carriers, how much you are paid. A four-sector day of forty-minute hops can be more tiring than one ten-hour flight, and regulators cap the flight duty period differently depending on how many sectors it contains.
In practice
A Pegasus crew member at Sabiha Gökçen works a typical four-sector day — Istanbul to Antalya and back, then Istanbul to Izmir and back — before signing off at base without a night away.
Go deeper
Related terms
4 terms- RotationFlight operationsA complete trip that starts and ends at your base — one or more sectors, with any layovers in between.
- Sector payPay & benefitsPay earned per flight flown rather than per hour — the model most European low-cost carriers use on top of a small basic.
- Flight duty periodRoster & schedulingThe regulated window from report for a flying duty to engines off after the last sector; the core limit protecting crew from fatigue.
- TurnaroundRoster & schedulingThe ground time between an aircraft's arrival and its next departure, and by extension a duty that goes out and comes straight back.