Have you ever looked at your airplane ticket, and wondered what some of the letters stamped on it mean? Does it make any different which letter of the alphabet you happen to have on your boarding pass?

Different letters can be used by different airlines, but there are some that tend to remain the same.

Next time you are able to take a look at your air ticket, here are some of the letters you are likely to see, and what they mean:

First class: A or F

Full fare business: C, D or J

Discounted business: I or Z

Premium economy: E or W

Full-fare economy: B, H, M or Y

Discount economy: K, L, N, O, Q, S, T, U, V, X

So, those are the codes. But why does it matter? Does it really make a difference if your ticket says J rather than C, or B rather than K, for example?

Well, yes actually. The code on your ticket will determine such things as whether you have a flexible fare, which will allow you to make changes to your booking without incurring heavy costs. It can also show how many air miles you are likely to accumulate if you are part of a frequent flyer program. You may find that if you have several legs of air travel on your journey, you have several codes.

If you are travelling 1,000 miles with a code D for example, this might give you 1,750 frequent flyer miles. But you may get only 500 miles for a Z class.

Becoming very familiar with what the code letters mean can help you to maximize your frequent flyer miles. Because codes differ between different airlines and the rewards will also vary, it is easiest to make yourself an expert on one or two of your preferred airlines rather than trying to figure out what all of the codes across all of the airlines might mean for you.

This content was provided to MentourPilot by provider, Travel Radar Media. Travel Radar offers high quality content in partnership with Mentour