Stopover rules - how does this work?
 

I would not have thought this itinerary to be possible with 60,000 CO miles, but my sister booked it for May over the phone today:

ICT-DEN-EWR-MUC-TIA(5 day stopover)-MUC-BSL(14 day stopover)-MUC-YYZ-ORD-ICT

How was this calculated out at 60k miles? I can see the outbound ICT-TIA for 30k, but how does she get to Basel for a 14-day stopover, backtracking to Munich on the way back for no extra miles? I'd mainly like to know because there must be a trick here I'd like to use for myself in the future.

It's legit. One is a stopover, one is a final destination.

Thanks, but I'm not as knowledgeable as you on how this is determined. Is any location within a certain mileage of a direct route a valid stopover, even if it requires several connecting and backtracking flights? Assuming Tirana was the destination, could a stopover on the return have been just about anywhere in Western Europe that a Star Alliance partner connects to ? I tried doing a search for an explanation, but came up empty. Maybe I didn't get the correct search terms. If these rules and options have been discussed in detail before, I'd be glad to be directed to the relevant thread.

Thanks!

The short answer is that, for Europe, anywhere in the region can be the destination and anywhere else can be the stopover. You can also add an open-jaw in there so fly ICT-DEN-EWR-MUC-TIA, then get yourself to SPU and fly from there to BSL for the second stop and then fly home from there.

If you're really aggressive, you can also build in some long connections to add more destinations. Anything under 24 hours is just a connection so those don't count against your limits. I flew ARN-IST over 4 days in January, visiting Berlin, Ljubljana and Skopje along the way, all for 12,500 points as a one-way Europe award. I had 20ish hours or more in each city. It was awesome. I spent a couple nights in Istanbul and then headed back home.

Oh, and my return was IST-MUC-EWR, with a cool 23:55 on the ground in MUC. :cool: