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 United even after the merger. However, now they seem to be limiting the segments you can book online.
The other day I went to look at a flight (for a friend) that is from Charlottesville, VA to Dublin with a stopover on the way back in Iceland. For some reason the site wouldn’t work at all for that route, but when I tried from DC it worked fine… 60,000 United miles for the entire trip. The extra segment from Charlottesville to DC on both sides was enough to stop the site from booking my ticket.
Note that it could be helpful to see our post to understand the rules of United stopovers and there is a post on how to book stopovers on United.com, but this is for routes that are too complicated to show up online.
So how do we get around this? Find the ticket on United.com from the international hub instead, then find the flights to that hub, and then call and book. Let me break it down:
First, go through the normal booking process using the “Multiple Destination” search and “Award Search”. Heck it might work for you and the process is now 1 step! Here’s the route my friends actually want to fly.
Try Again. I could try my search over again starting from Boston (or DC) and ending in DC. At least you’re starting in the same zone with less routes. It will at least tell you if you understand the rules correctly and what the price will be (this is relevant as when you cross multiple (3) zones the price shown by your search will sometimes be for the lower zone and sometimes for the higher zone: not consistent really.).
Then, find your international hubs. What you need to notice when going through the booking process is that first it routes me to DC, then on the way back it routes through DC again. DC is my international hub.
Find flights to the international hub. When booking this part, give yourself at least an hour of layover before you leave on your international trip but find this flight separately and piece it together. So on the last step I tried booking my flight on United.com to and from DC and it worked. Now I just need to find out when I need to leave Charlottesville to get to DC.
Call and book. Now I have all the flights and info to give to the agent. If he/she doesn’t like it, just call back later. The great part about this method is that you are confident that this route will price the way you want… it’s just that United.com doesn’t allow enough segments to book it. Here’s how I keep track of which flights to give to the agent.
- I will write down the dates and flight numbers and piece together the flight online while we talk. I search one-ways and can see all the steps along the way.
- I keep open each step in a different tab.
- Or you could just put the entire thing into the Multiple Destination search, the way it should be, and walk through it with the agent. No it won’t actually work, but who cares, the agent is the one booking and at least you can see the flights.
But to be honest, if you understand the rules well, you can skip from the first step to the last. Again, it won’t price it on United.com but you can see what flights are available along the way. That’s all you really need to know if your confident in the rules.
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Recommendations to avoid the $25 phone fee?
Be a 1k. :-p
A while back I booked a flight (but now don’t remember if it was USA or UA) and I said it wasn’t bookable online and they waived it. So try hard to book online and then know why it’s not bookable online. I.e. can’t see a partner’s award space, say “you can’t book this kind of flight online” and let them know it’s your only option. That my plan. They have the power to waive it.
One time I wanted to change a flight (with British Airways) and was super friendly and got talking to the guy… he waived the $70-some change fee. So they can if they want.
Another time, I got charged for a less than 21 day until departure booking fee with AA but the phone agent never told me and I could easily changed the date (I booked it 20 days out). So I wrote AA and they gave me the $150 in a voucher.
I recently returned from a United flight to Europe booked online with 14 segments, but of course it was booked nearly a year ago. Any guideline on how many segments still can be booked online, and is it hard to get agents to work with you on the phone with the crazy itineraries? Luckily I still have a couple more coming up booked a long time ago.
I’m not too sure on the number of segments now. The funny thing is that when trying to book stopovers in the South Pacific now, I get an error no mater how few segments. With Europe to Asia I can easily get in more than 9 segments. Essentially, I think non hub stopovers confuses the computer. So, I just do my best I can to piece it together using hubs… at least until I call.
My luck with agents is that the more it sounds too good to be true the more stubborn they get. They want to do it themselves but if you can say “I want to be on flight XX555 departing at 2:00” they might put it in. But if you say “I want to go to Paris” they’ll find the route themselves. Which is fine if your not picky about the plane and stuff. Then you can just say on this day I want to go to ___ and make it a stopover. Anyways… I’ve had a number of agents that wouldn’t/couldn’t book it and so I just call back.
Hi,
I am trying to understand how the stopover works.
My intended trip is as follows:
HKG to LHR on Aug 23
LHR to EWR on Aug 6
EWR to HKG on Aug 8
Is this possible? Or do i have to have an open jaw in the middle for it to work?
This is totally do able. You can have one stopover AND two openjaws. So this fits as LHR is your one stopover and hopefully you can book it all online using the multidestination search.
I’m a little confused about the open jaws. I know the stopover can be an unlimited amount of time as you have stayed 3 weeks at a particular place for your stopover, how about for opens jaws? Could you give me some cities and dates as an example? like HKG to LHR on so and so date, then LHR to someone else would be the stopover, etc.?
Right, so LHR is a stopover and you could apply an open-jaw to it. This means that you now will continue your flight from a different airport. So in 3 weeks you go the Airport in Paris (CDG) and continue to HKG. So an openjaw is the gap in your ticket where united is not responsible for transportation. In this case, you’re on your own from LHR to CDG.
The same can be applied to your destination. You could take a train from Hong Kong to Shanghai and continue your trip home.
Thanks for the explanation!
I’m a little confused about the 1 stopover & 2 open jaws rule for United. I understand that I can do this: NYC –> LON (stopover) LON –> Paris. Then open jaw and go from Rome –> NYC, but I still have 1 open jaw left. Instead of doing Rome –> NYC for the first open jaw could I do Rome –> Frankfurt (1st open jaw), then Munich –> NYC (2nd open jaw)??
Almost… You’ve got the concept except each break of more than 24 hours is either the stopover OR the destination, regardless of whether or not there is an open-jaw. You can add an open-jaw to the stopover, the destination OR the origin.
In that case, the time in Germany is a second stopover. You could however have an open-jaw London to Paris, and then Rome to Frankfurt.
You can also fly home to Atlanta and that would be considered an open-jaw too.
LOVE your site! Can you please offer suggestions on this? Like you, I have had a lot of problems trying to determine number of points using UA’s site.
PHX – ICN (10 days)
ICN – HNL (15 days)
HNL – PHX
(There may even be some island hopping between HNL/LIH/OGG in there also before returning to PHX but I’m mostly concerned with the biggies.)
If this routing ends up requiring too many points, we could take AA home from Hawaii. Thanks for any advice you can provide.
Thank you SO much!
It doesn’t cost any extra to add a stopover. So it’s like 65k roundtrip to Asia in economy. Or whatever the price is. The tough thing is getting it to stick online. So you’d have to piece it together. But it shouldn’t price any differently when ticketed.
Thanks, yes, I get that part. It just seems like I keep reading about people doing tons of legs in Business low miles. Was just curious if I start out somewhere other than Phoenix if I could do Seoul and Hawaii for less than 120K RT. Thanks again!