Stopovers
Making stopovers with United is like a hobby of mine. You don't have to have an unlimited amount of time to be able to utilize stopovers, just a desire to see more of the world. In my example today, 2 days in Iceland is enough to see what it's like. So we all know that I love stopovers, right? However, United.com is not what it use to be! You were once able to book the craziest routes on Continental's website and I swear to you that I booked some equally crazy routes on...
If you can get through this first paragraph I'm going to tell you how I visited Guam, Singapore, Sydney, New Zealand, The Cooke Islands and Japan in business class for 40,000 United miles. 40,000 miles is nothing! The Chase Sapphire Preferredcard, for example, gives 40,000 points (or United miles) as a sign up bonus. So stick with me and I'll help you recreate this or a similar trip for a similar price or less. This may be the most rewarding but challenging post in the series.
One thing about airline stopover rules is that terms are sometimes undefined. US Airways does a decent job but some of it is still trial and error.
Rules
Basically US Airways allows a stopover OR an open jaw. Here are the relevent rules:
- "Stopovers are not permitted when travel is within one award region..."
- "Open jaw travel is defined as flying to a city and returning from a different city on a valid routing having one common city. The distance between the two open jaw cities cannot exceed the distance of the outbound or return trip. This may include certain itinerary...
Having already discussed stopovers and open jaws before, this post is a simple overview about each airline's rules.
I more thoroughly explain stopovers and open jaws here. For creative ways to use stopovers to save miles see here and here.
US Airways - Allows one stopover or one open jaw. One catch is that you have to be traveling in more than one region (as defined by their award chart) for a stopover. In other words, if your itinerary is within the lower 48, you can have an open jaw but no stopover.
United Airlines - United...
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