Thanks,
We were planning to flying eastward RTW with * alliance, departing from IAD and
stopping over for 3 days each in BKK and SIN. But * alliance RTW rules require a minimum of 3 stopovers of at least 24 hours (the red-eye idea won't work because 24hrs must elapse between arrival and departure times in your stopover city).
So I dreamed up the idea of "creating" a stopover by starting (and ending) the itinerary from CHO rather than IAD. (We actually live closer to CHO than IAD, though both are within easy driving distance). The first leg, which we were not intending to use, would be CHO-IAD with a 2-day "stopover" while in reality we would drive to IAD for the real start of the trip: IAD-BKK, BKK-SIN. SIN-CHO.

I guess the question is: Would the airlines look on this as harshly as they do a hidden city routing? RTW rules are horribly complicated but I found nothing in the rules about missing a flight segment being punishable by cancellation of the whole itinerary. In fact as long as you stick to the rules (no backtracking, only one stopover allowed per city, 3 min. stopovers in itinerary etc.) RTWs are remarkably flexible about date / time changes, adding more cities. I wish we could add more cities but we're on a tight timetable.