I'm trying to make changes at the end of a *A rtw terminating in the US. There are very strict stopover and transfer limits once I'm back in NA. I'm being told by an agent that I can't book the tail end I desire because I have too many transfers even though some are stopovers.

The specific example (sfo and sjc count as same for rtw)

rno-lax....rtw....fra-sfo stopover sjc-ord-rdu stopover rdu-ord-sjc-(<24hours(transfer))-sfo-rno

Note - I'm nowhere near the mileage or overall stopover limit (star1)

The agent insisted that rdu counted as a transfer putting me at 4 with a limit of three.

The bottom line - does a stopover also count against my transfer total?

The agent is correct. A stopover is also a transfer.

It's easy to confuse the similar-sounding terms 'transit' and 'transfer.'

A 'transit' is leaving a city within 24 hours of having arrived there on a rtw. A stopover is leaving a city more than 24 hours after having arrived there on a rtw. Both a transit and a stopover are considered to be transfers.

Yeah, the restrictions for travel within NA are a pain.

A one-way ticket SFO-RNO is only like $100, though.

It's great to get clear answers like this and the one from Kiwi Flyer. Any good source of this info other than asking on FT? For example: What are these "coupons" I'm limited to 24 of on a *A rtw.

A coupon is either a flight segment (booked as single flight number) or a surface segment (VOID on paper tickets).

Note that a single coupon may in fact cover more than one flight - eg NZ1 booked as LHR-AKL is actually LHR-LAX-AKL with a short transit in LAX. NZ1 could also be booked as 2 coupons, LHR-LAX and LAX-AKL. This might be due to having a stopover in LAX (1 or more days), booking into a different class on the 2 flights, or for other reasons.

The xRWSTARx rules used to specify 24 flight segments. When they changed to coupons it meant surface segments got counted in the limit whereas previously they did not count. xONEx (the One World Explorer RTW) has recently had a similar change to include surface segments, but with a maximum of 20 rather than 24.

Not quite. For example, if you fly SIN-hkg-SFO or AKL-lax-LHR, you will have a transit in the intermediate city. However, since you get back on the same airplane, operating under the same flight number, these are transits which are not transfers.

cheers,

Henry

unless as mentioned by Kiwiflyer you are using two coupons , for example say AKL-LAX in Y and LAX-LHR in J or SIN-HKG in J and HKG-SFO in F then it is still a transfer even if it is the same a/c and same flight number

Indeed. But since it was mentioned by KiwiFlyer, I didn't see any point in repeating.

cheers,

Henry

To clarify, a transfer is the connection between 2 (sequential) coupons.

This thread is going so well I'm going to keep asking:

Under Combinations

What exactly is a combination?

What is End-on-end? (not permitted)

What are Add-ons? (not permitted)