avoid super long flight to tokyo?
 

Hi, I am trying to split up a long flight to Tokyo. I'm coming from Rochester NY. The best I have found is through Seattle. I would rather take two 8 or 9 hour flights than one 14 hour flight, especially if I could stop somewhere for a day or two and get used to the time change on my way to Tokyo. When I limit a search by duration, it gives you the shortest entire travel time, including all flights, not necessarily the international flight. Is there a search out there that will help me? I wouldn't mind going through, vancouver, hawaii, anything, I mostly just want to avoid a super long flight. Thanks for your comments.

Try ITA's Airfare search
http://www.itasoftware.com/

As with other airfare searches, you can only filter by total travel time. But on the results page, you can choose to view results by "Time Bars," which give you a graphic representation of the time spent on each flight. It lets you quickly identify the options that suit you.
► Complete trips► Individual flights► Time bars

ITA isn't an agency, so you need to buy the flights elsewhere.

Speaking for myself, I've never found it particularly helpful to split journeys in this way. I find it best to rip the elastoplast off in one go. But YMMV.

Thank you for the link. I found it very useful.

JAL flies from SAN, LAX, and YVR.

Or, if you really want 8-9 hour flights, you could fly "the wrong way," and connect through Europe.

This. Going from East Coast to West Coast just to "break up" the trip doesn't make any sense. All West Coast flights are pretty much polar route, and it's still 10-11 hours. Maybe HNL?

Going east to west, HNL is the only one that makes sense for the OP's plan. It is also a pretty nice place for a 2-3 day layover.

Another option for ticketing to consider is to purchase two separate tickets. When searching online for ROC (Rochester, NY) – HND/NRT (Tokyo, JP) with stop over somewhere along the way, then it is possible that the search results will contain only fares which allow stop over along the way.

Fares which allow stop over along the way, not transit at connecting airport (in old paper ticketing fares allow stop over were indicated by “O” in front of city listed on the ticket, and when fare rule does not allow stop over were indicated by “X” in front of city listed on the ticket), can be higher than simple transit connection only.

Which means if you are planning ROC-HNL-HND/NRT, rather than try to purchase one ROC-HND/NRT round trip ticket which allows stop over at HNL, buying two separate tickets ROC-HNL round trip and HNL-HND/NRT round trip.

Disadvantage of purchasing two separate tickets:

• These days some airlines are implementing the rule that baggage will not be checked through to the final destinations when purchased as two separate tickets. Which means if you have two separate round trip ticket, ROC-HNL and HNL-HND/NRT then airline at ROC may not check your baggage all the way to Tokyo.

However, in your situation you are planning few days of stop over so likely you are planning to collect your luggage at stop over airport. Then this should not be a problem.

• When having two separate tickets, strictly from fare rule airlines will not be responsible for missing the connecting flight due to flight delay or flight cancellation.

Again, in your case you are planning to spend a day or two at a stop over point, so having first flight delayed or cancelled should not cause major problem in your trip plan.

All these many make things more complicated, but you simply have to compare fares and determine which route and single ticket or two separate tickets, which stop over city is least expensive, the day of the week, etc.

Probably the only airports in N.America with flight time of <10hrs both directions are YVR and SEA. Possibly YYC and PDX on a good day, ANC is charters only. Unless you're willing to drive to YYZ, there is no way to get to any of those places nonstop from where you live. Otherwise it'd be 1-stop flight just to get to Northwestern N.America, from where you're looking at 9~10hr flight to TYO. So that seems like a lot of trouble, and I have to tell you that a stopover like that is not going to help you at all in getting used to the subsequent time change. There's a 7-hr time zone difference between SEA/YVR and TYO. Stopping through Hawaii may or may not help ease your time zone adjustment (for me, I don't know that it would really). But that would be a very roundabout way to get to TYO from upstate NY and most likely expensive.

There should be plenty of ways to get to MSP on a short flight from one of the airports near Rochester. And then MSP-TYO is ~12hr (shorter coming back). Only a couple hours longer than the SEA-NRT flight. Would that work? Actually, 12hr on Delta will feel much longer than a slightly longer flight on ANA from ORD.

Anchorage?

If you're willing to charter a plane, I guess. AFAIK, there haven't been commercial flights to Tokyo from Anchorage in many years.

You could fly business class. Your layover could be a nap on a lie flat seat halfway through the flight and then arrive (relatively) fresh.

Doing a stopover or taking two tickets is likely to make the trip much mire expensive. If you're concerned about jet lag, you could plan to arrive in Japan a day or two earlier.

^

This is honestly the only way I fly to Japan. Thank you, frequent flier miles. 13 hours from Chicago in JAL sky suites is a lovely way to spend a day.

Just for reference, random date on March on United. We are looking at this kind of price differences.

Economy Round Trip, no stop over
ROC-NRT: $1,178.86

Economy Stop Over at Honolulu, 2 tickets:
ROC-HNL: $817.99
HNL-NRT: $649.36

Total: 1,467.35

Business Class Round trip, no stop over
ROC-NRT: $4,396.63

If on business trip and a company will pay for a business class then business class is nice option. However, if it is on own dime then business class is out of my budget. I am wondering what OP’s budget for the travel.


Unless fly yourself as a cargo. :p Cargo airlines uses Anchorage as a hub for far east destination. FedEx, UPS, and Nippon Cargo have schedule commercial flights on ANC-NRT pretty much on daily basis.