It seems like the average consumer will need a dictionary to understand all the airline terminologies that are express on a regular basis. I will give you a break down of most terms starting from what gate agents commonly used to pilot terms. Before you even come to an airport, the airlines are checking your name against a list called the no-fly list. This is a government list from Homeland Security of either people consider to be a threat to airline safety or people affiliated with bad people. Once on this list it could be difficult to get off. The airlines maintain their own no-fly list for passengers it considered to be problematic. The only difference is that just that specific airline can ban a passenger from getting on their flight. Once you make it pass that stage you normally will check in at the gate. Once you check in your bags you made have heard the term interline which simply means your flying to a multi-city destinations on different air carriers. At each airport they have a designated spot to place checked bags going to another airline.

Each air carrier will have a bag runner to pick up those interline bags so that will eventually make it to your flight & destination. Once at the gate, you may have heard the term standby, or space positive. A standby passengers means they been rolled over to another flight from their original & put on a list of by priority code. A person that paid a full price for their ticket will have a higher priority then an airline employee, or a passenger from another airline rolled over to your flight. A space positive ticket means you have a confirmed seat that the airline can't take away from you. Anyone who purchased a full fare ticket & is not on standby fits in this category. This is also most common for a trainee, or a new job applicant flying in for an interview.

Once your at the gate area, its common to hear the term ground stop, edec, or wheels up time when flights are delayed. A ground stop is a systematic delay for a region for a unknown time period. This is common if you have severe weather causing chao's in the region like a line of thunderstorms, nor'easter, tornadoes, or even a terrorist attack like 9/11. A wheels up time delay means that flight can leave only within plus or minus 5 minutes of the time frame air traffic controllers gave the crew. So you can push back from the gate, but you may have to hold short of the runway into you are close to your time of release. A edec time is vary similar to wheels up time. Edec's are commonly used when you have rush hour,or delays due to using only one runway perhaps because of strong winds. With both of these delays, the delay time could extend longer or shorter at the discretion of the FAA, or air traffic controllers so you need to have a healthy dose of patience. With wheels up time, or edec they are used to slow down, or meter traffic.

Other reasons why a flight may be delayed is because of crew rest. Crew rest delays are cause when a flight crew been on duty so long that they exceeded their maximum hours for the day, week, or month. These rules are strictly enforced, and an airline will cancel or delay a flight indefinite because of crew rest issues. There is no wriggle room for crew rest delays. Ok, so now that your on the airplane other terms you may hear is the flight attendants say 1R or 1L with cross check . That's a term meaning the cabin doors are either closed or open with the emergency slide door being armed or disarmed. Sometimes the captain may delay the flight because of paperwork. This almost always means they are waiting for weight & balance data, or their dispatch release which is required before they depart.

The release has vital information on it like navigation routing, airworthiness status, & fuel needed for the flight. Sometimes the flight is delayed because of miscellaneous maintenance issues such as the aircraft not having the maintenance book. This book gives you the airworthiness status of the aircraft, & you can't leave the gate without this book. Normally, this book is in the aircraft. However, sometimes maintenance was working on the aircraft earlier & need the book to sign off a previous write up. At this point you maybe airborne, but still have more problems with delays. Sometimes you get a holding pattern in flight to slow aircraft down prior to arrival. A holding pattern is a big race track in the sky used by air traffic controllers to stack aircraft & release them one by one at the air traffic controllers discretion especially when there's reduce visibility at a destination airport. All this information is useful. This is basically all the common terms you will come across on your travel journey, and will help you to see a big picture of what is going on behind the scenes at an airline.