Stopover Question (AA/UA)
 

Hi FT,

I have a fairly basic question regarding stopovers. To my understanding, UA allows stopovers for both domestic and international while AA only does international from a gateway city.

Here is the question: If I am planning a NY-SFO trip in December (likely using miles), can I book two one-ways and then use SFO/JFK as stopovers to, say, Tokyo and London? And, to take it a step further, if I wanted to do somewhere like Bangkok, would that count even if there were legs between SFO-BKK?

Thanks in advance. Still trying to understand the stopover game. Since it is a bit late for saver awards, I wanted to maximize my miles by booking a free flight to Europe and a free flight to Asia at some point in the next year...figure I'll try to grab saver awards coming back and egt a few trips locked down for 2013 :)

EDIT: Also, how would this compare with a roundtrip booking? Or does it matter? And do you need specific dates to travel in advance (for the international one-ways)? Wanted to be prepared before calling in...thank you!!

Using AA miles I believe you can do JFK -> SFO (stop for X days) -> Tokyo, Haneda (HND) via Japan Airlines

You could also do SFO->JFK(stop for X days)->Tokyo (NRT) via Japan Airlines using AA miles.

In stopping for "X days" could I leave it open and have a free one-way flight to Tokyo anytime over the course of the next year? And would it make more sense to use the SFo-JFK to go somewhere east?

I guess two one-way flights to Tokyo aren't too bad, but may mix it up.

You need to book JFK to NRT as a roundtrip with a stopover in SFO. You can do with either AA or UA. You would have to pick dates but for a fee you can move dates.

Ah okay, I understand. So hypothetically I book JFK-NRT roundtrip, lets say JFK-SFO in December and the SFO-NRT leg in April, then NRT-JFK May.

With that I get a "free" JFK-SFO flight and can wait four months to do my Japan trip, but will have to make it back to SFO in order to complete it..?

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Except for AA's distance-based "Explorer" awards, all AA awards are now one-way. On awards between AA's North America zone and another zone, a stopover at the North American gateway is permitted; it is not necessary to book roundtrip travel to get the stopover when using AA miles. The stopover can be of any duration, but all travel on each award must be completed within one year of award-ticket issuance.

As to whether a particular routing will be allowed when a partner carrier is used for the over-water segment, that depends on the partner carriers's published fare rules for cash tickets between origination and (final) destination.

You are correct. That's why if you can do Tokyo after your SFO trip then that'd be best. You would request a SFO -> Tokyo trip with a stop over in JFK.

Actually, now that I think about it, I'm not sure if AA will let you do that since you can go straight from SFO -> Tokyo... does anyone else have any experience about that?

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You should certainly be able to book SFO-JFK (stop) - HND on aa.com, using AA metal.

Whether you can book SFO-JFK (stop) - NRT, with the JFK-NRT leg on JL, would depend on JL's published-fare rules for SFO-NRT. A call to AA (which would be needed to book award flights on JL anyway) should provide the answer to that question.

You're getting some questionable advice here, so let's try to break it down. AA and UA work very differently.

AA:

You get one stopover per one-way award. The stopover must be at the North American gateway city - which is the last city in North America on your routing leaving the region, or the first city on the way back. To use SFO as a stopover, you'd have to fly directly onward to an Asian city (for example) without making any other connection (say, LAX).

You have to pick a date for the onward flight but you can change it, free of charge, to any date up to a year past the date you originally purchased the ticket, as long as the new date is at least 21 days after your original purchase date. (If you can't make the change online, sometimes you'll pay the phone booking fee, sometimes not.)

UA:

You get one stopover per round trip award. The stopover can generally be anywhere on a valid routing between the origin and destination.

Again, you have to pick a date for the onward flight and again you can change it free of charge, up to a year past purchase date, as long as that date is also at least 21 days past the date you make the change. (Same with the phone booking fee.)

For both, you also get at least one open jaw to work with, so depending on exactly your routing, you can do more clever things.

See also: the Mile Value blog, which specializes in clever routing ideas.

(Particularly http://milevalue.com/the-five-cardin...rlines-awards/ and http://milevalue.com/choosing-betwee...united-awards/ )

Awesome, thanks for the responses you guys. My mission is to get two tickets for each trip, one to Asia one to South America.

For AA, I'm going to try to do a JFK - SFO (few days stopover to see family) -HND or HKG. If I wanted to, my understanding is I may be able to use JFK again as a stopover for a free one-way to another international city, since each could be a one-way w/ stopover. EDIT: let me qualify the last part: I'd do one one-way from JFK - SFO (stopover) - HKG, and another one-way HKG - SFO - JFK (stopover) - LON...woul this work?

For UA, I'm going to try to do a JFK - GIG (or another LA region country as a stopover for a week) - EZE, then EZE - JFK.

I have around 120k miles in each, so these would have to be saver awards in economy, but timing/economy really isn't an issue.

If I could come out with the above trips I'd be incredibly happy...if I could also end up with two one-ways to London for the next year, I'd be ecstatic. Sounds like this is plausible, so time to plan the dates out and hop on the phone.

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"I'd do one one-way from JFK - SFO (stopover) - HKG, and another one-way HKG - SFO - JFK (stopover) - LON...would this work?"

HKG-SFO-JFK (stop) - LON would not be allowed, for several reasons:

1. AAdvantage awards between Asia and Europe do not permit a transit via North America.

2. Even if AA permitted a North America transit on a HKG-LON award, the free stopover is only permitted on awards between North America and another zone; HKG-LON would be an award between Asia 2 and Europe.

3. Awards between North America and another zone (in either direction) only permit a stopover at the North American gateway. On a HKG-SFO-JFK itinerary, the gateway is SFO, not JFK. So you could have a stopover at SFO, and then continue on to some other North American destination, as permitted by CX's routing rules. Whether HKG-SFO-JFK or JFK-SFO-HKG would be permitted depends on CX's routing rules on its published HKG-JFK/JFK-HKG fares.