Alaska gives a stopover on award tickets, allowing you to spend as much time as you want in the connecting city without ever increasing your miles price at all.
Alaska Stopovers are still one of the best deals out there, and I wanted to go through all routes and try to share the best stopover deals I found. Prices often don’t make much sense, so pay attention to those as I list the routes!
It is such a good deal that you could save money on your Europe trip by adding a trip to Mexico or Hawaii first. Or you could use a stopover to save miles on a trip to Hawaii.
There are so many great deals and this post will list them as best I can.
The Concept
In the post Alaska Miles Routing Rules, I broke down the 4 rules when using Alaska Miles:
- 1 Partner Airline + Alaska
- Only routes listed on award chart
- Stopovers are allowed in “hubs”
- It’s all “oneway” – per direction
Of course, these are not comprehensive, but they explain a lot of the rules. Of course, in the US you can often get stopovers in non-hubs.
The rule about award charts is that if a route price isn’t listed, it’s almost always not bookable. For example, there are no prices for Africa to Australia because you can’t do it with Alaska Miles (that I know of).
The other thing is, it tells you who you can fly through. This alone reveals interesting routes.
For example, see below:
I selected South Pacific to United States and it offered Fiji Airways, and more bizarrely, I could fly Korean… I guess that would be the long way around.
Sure enough, this worked…
Fiji to Seattle with a stopover in Korea:
Then, Almost Anywhere on Alaska…
One exception to the rule above seems to have to do with Alaska (Airlines). (It may not have directly to do with Alaska so much as the Mexico/Central American/Caribbean/Hawaii regions, but Alaska is the only airline you’re allowed to fly after you’ve started with a partner.)
In short, when traveling to the US, it seems you’re frequently able to tack on the aforementioned regions, regardless of what does or doesn’t show up in the award chart. (Or the same route in reverse).
(Remember, you are limited by route combinations due to the unusually strict rule of only using one partner (in addition to Alaska Airlines itself) each way.)
In the following example, I can fly Korean to the US and then anywhere as long as I’m using Alaska Airlines for the next leg.
So below is Fiji to Mexico, yet there is no option on the award chart for this.
My point is, why would this be on the partner award chart? After all Korean doesn’t fly to Mexico, it showed all the valid Korean routes, and it seems to be the same price to then hop an Alaska flight to the limited number of places they can fly.
However, I noticed that in the examples above you can stopover in the US and then take a later flight to Hawaii.
Then I noticed another route I’ve used as an example (Australia to US and then later to Hawaii) doesn’t list AA as an option, but it is clearly bookable on AA.
But to be sure, I decided to figure out as many interesting routes as I could just by playing around with the pricing. I’m just trying as many route combos as possible!
Finding The Interesting Stopovers
Note that every single route works the same in both directions. If you see an example like the following: start in Fiji, stopover in Seattle, then end in Mexico… You could just as easily book a ticket where you start in Mexico, stopover in Seattle (or US) and end in Fiji.
In my mind there are two types of stopovers that I’ll talk about:
1) A “stopover” in your home to essentially book two different tickets. You could come back from Fiji in the Spring, stopover in your home area (if they allow), and then continue to Mexico in the fall.
2) A stopover in another country, as part of a round-the-world style ticket. A stopover in Korea on the way to Fiji is just a long vacation.
It’s up to you to figure out the use that works for you.
Australia
- SYD-LAX-HNL = 40k/80k/110k
- SYD-NAN-SEA = 40k/55k
- SYD-LAX-SJD = 40K/55K (on Fiji)
- SYD-NRT-HNL/LAX
- SYD-NAN-HNL = 27.5K/45K
Sydney to LAX (stopover), later to Hawaii is common, but to be able to stop in Japan is cool if you’re in business.
But the best deals, in my opinion, are on Fiji Airways. If you take a boat out to the surrounding islands, you will not regret it! (Avoid the chain hotels on the man-made island near the airport, go to Cancun for that).
A stopover in Fiji on the way to Australia is killer. And it’s an ever cheaper flight if you start in Hawaii!
Europe
- MEX-DFW-LHR = 22.5K/57.5K
- HNL-DFW-LHR = 22.5K/57.5K
- LAX/HNL-HEL-HKG = 50K/125K
- LAX/HNL-HEL-DXB = 40K/105K
- MLE-FRA-SEA/HNL=50K/65K (or any flight on Condor to Africa/ME)
- US–Iceland–Europe = 27.5k/55k
While more common, I still think the Hawaii – US – Europe on AA off-peak is the best deal in miles! I really think it’s up there.
As long as you fly the first segment, like Hawaii or Mexico to the US, in off-peak, then the entire thing will be priced off-peak. So this is not only a way to get an extra ticket from Hawaii to the US, but also a way to save on a Europe ticket in the summer.
Here’s a ticket that is Mexico to US in spring (off-peak to Europe), and then US to Europe in August (peak season). If it was just US to Europe it would be 30k, but since it “starts” in off-peak season, the ticket is 22.5k.
Obviously the Finnair and Condor options area a little more expensive in price.
And I completely left off British Airways because of the insane fuel surcharges, but you can stopover in London on the way to Africa, the Middle East, or almost anywhere in Europe.
Latin America
- MEX-DFW-LIM = 20k/30k
- LIM-DFW-HNL = 20k/30k
- MEX-LAX-HNL = 22.5k/40k
- SJO/AUA-LAX-HNL = 17.5k/27.5k
- MEX-MIA-SJU = 17.5k/27.5k
Let me stop and point out just the prices here. On AA a flight to Hawaii is normally 22,500 miles…
But a flight to/from Hawaii that later includes a flight to Peru is only 20,000 miles. This is not just a 2 for 1 kind of deal, you save miles.
For some reason the entire route here assumes the South America price.
But with Mexico it assumes the higher Hawaii price.
Then I checked Caribbean and Central America and noticed that they were part of the group that assumed the lower price.
Therefore, going to Hawaii? I might recommend going to South America, Central America, or the Caribbean next!
Emirates to Most of the World
- HNL/SJD-SEA-DXB = 47.5K/82.5K/150K
- KUL-DXB-KUL/JNB = 52.5/105K/180K
- SJD-LAX-JNB = 47.5K/120K
Asia
- SJD-SEA-NRT = 35K/60K
- HNL-SEA-NRT = 35K/60K
- DEL-NRT-LAX/HNL = 35K/60K/70K
This last [Japan Airlines] route is a great deal to India or that part of the world. 35k/60k/70k is already great for India, but then to have the stopover in Japan is a great addition.
Tons of Cathay Options (not searchable)
One of the airlines to show up in the most regions is Cathay. It has some of the most routes with Alaska Miles and the best prices… Making it a little annoying that their award space isn’t searchable on Alaska, and that I can’t play around with its stopover combos online.
Yet, the award chart tells us that there are great prices to fly Cathay all over the world (plus, Hong Kong makes a great stopover).
However, the deal of the year (which I posted about years ago), is the following:
US – Hong Kong – Africa = 50k/62.5k/70k
Conclusion
Alaska still has some of the most valuable miles with the best stopover possibilities and prices.
There could be more route combinations out there that I missed, if so comment and let me know!
I was able to do MIA-SCL-LIM on LATAM… pretty sure you had a article awhile back detailing this?
DW
Another article to be forever bookmarked and referenced before spinning the globe and deciding where to go. Thanks for this, and welcome back!
Here is a simple Alaska Airlines metal trip I took that I really liked:
San Francisco to Glacier Bay. Then Glacier Bay to Juneau, 15 day layover,then Juneau to San Francisco. During that layover, we took a wonderful 15 day Alaska cruise on UnCruise, a very small ship company that does not stop at various ports so you can buy overpriced stuff, but instead stops at bays, inlets, and fjords to hike and kayak to view wildlife and spectacular scenery. If they see a bear during a meal, they stop the meal. (You can get a discount by mentioning my name.)
I will save this as I often do for your info but I do not find it helpful for me traveling always from leaving in the USA Seattle. We love Alaska and use them often but your post does not give useful info for me for stopovers from our home base in Seattle. We are now in Europe and did use Alaska miles to fly here but the only stopovers I could figure out stopped in American air hubs in the US. So we flew two one way awards…one from Seattle to Philadelphia and on to Madrid and then back from Lisbon to Philadelphia again and on to Seattle. We are spending 4 nights each way in Philadelphia and Delaware so see some of the East coast and break up the long flights. It was 22,500 miles each way per person economy. Was this the best I could do or is there a way to go from Seattle to Europe through another country? What about flying from Seattle to southern South America like Argentina which is where my husband wants to go next? Where can we do a stopover with Alaska Seattle to Argentina?
Carla wants help and wants it now
AWESOME analysis and presentation! This is so far heads and shoulders above the blogs that just repost credit card deals and create no new content/knowledge. Super useful and relevant and bookmarkable.
Wow, 62.5K for US-Hong Kong-Africa? I booked a similar trip, SFO-SIN(stopover)-JNB-CPT on Singapore Airlines and it cost me 103K KF miles.
I’m confused by your AA offpeak example. I thought they stopped allowing stopovers?
Nevermind… You are using alaska miles duh.
It’d be great is there was better availability for those flights in biz class. 95% of the time the flights that show under business class are mixed seats and, of course, are economy on the longest flights.
I’ve really missed you and these kinds of posts! This whole insanity is the reason why this hobby is still exciting.
Thanks Drew,
Have you heard about the JAL stopover ‘trick’?
Here’s the article about it: https://mainlymiles.com/2019/04/19/buy-alaska-miles-with-a-50-bonus-until-20-may/#comments
I was wondering if we can get something similar here
Would it be possible to use alaska miles to book a free stopover from HNL-SYD-DFW OR DFW-SYD-HNL?
Thank you.
I have the same question as Carla–based in Alaska’s Seattle hub, how can we make this work best? Book separate 1-way flights to a “starting” point?