How do I book a stopover or open jaw with miles?

At a glance#

Why routing matters#

An award booking is a routing as well as a price. Knowing the rules can turn the same number of miles into two trips.

The rules come from the booking programme. The airline supplies the seats; the programme decides how they may be assembled into one booking. That split is why two programmes look completely different for the same trip: one allows a break en route, the other demands a second award for it.

Comparing programmes therefore means comparing more than miles. What may be combined into one booking matters as much as the price, which booking award flights with partners covers.

Search masks generally show simple itineraries, and complex routings never appear there. Searching only for an outbound and a return will never reveal what would be possible, because the possibility sits in the terms and not in the form.

So the planning order is fixed. Read the rules first, design the routing second, and only then search for availability. Reversing it means finding seats for a trip the programme will not let you assemble, or missing the trip it would have allowed.

The three terms#

Three terms are enough to settle any routing question. They differ only by duration and by where a journey is interrupted.

The connection#

A connection is a short stay at an intermediate point. Up to a duration stated by the programme it counts as part of the journey and costs nothing. The limit runs from a few hours to a full day depending on the programme, and within it the stay is invisible to pricing.

Spending a long evening in a city often stays under that limit, which gives you a small break with no extra rules at all. The limit gets underestimated frequently. A stay of several hours is not yet a stopover, and plenty of travellers plan a city walk without anything changing in the price.

The stopover#

Above the limit the stopover begins. It is a planned stay that appears as such in the booking.

Some programmes allow it free, others for a fixed surcharge, others not at all. Where it is allowed, it turns a long haul trip into two destinations. The number of stopovers is limited, usually to one per direction, and more than two is the exception in mainstream programmes.

For the traveller the practical difference is real. A stopover means a hotel, a plan and luggage in the intermediate city, and all of it belongs to the overall trip. Baggage handling changes too: on a stopover the bags are delivered to you, on a connection they are not, and that shapes the routine at the airport.

The open jaw#

With an open jaw the outbound ends in one city and the return starts from another. The traveller arranges the link, by rail or by car. For round trips that is the natural shape, since somebody travelling from north to south rarely wants to go back to where they landed.

Whether an open jaw is permitted also sits in the programme. Some allow it at no cost, others treat each direction as a separate award.

Combining both is the classic: an outbound with a stopover, onward travel on the ground and a return from another city, all in one booking at one award price. Spending a few days in a European hub on the way to Asia means seeing two destinations and paying, in a generous programme, the same award price as for the direct flight. Without that rule it would be two award bookings, and the difference equals the price of an entire additional trip.

Worked example: one trip, two rule sets#

Somebody wants to fly to a city, break the journey for a few days and travel on. Two programmes build the same trip differently.

Read down the right-hand column and the cost of missing rules becomes visible. The break en route is charged as a full second award, the trip splits into two bookings, and each of those carries its own change fee. The programme with stopovers asks for one award price and, at most, a fixed fee for the break, though the booking may need a phone call. The gap between the two columns is the price of the whole journey, and comfort hardly comes into it. Two destinations for the price of one are the exception in this business, and they arise exclusively through routing rules.

Any long haul trip raises three questions: is a stopover allowed, at which points, and does it cost anything? The answers usually sit in the same two paragraphs of the terms.

Flexibility for changes gets overlooked. A change to one segment affects the whole booking, and the fees follow the programme, as changing an award ticket describes. Even so, a booking with a stopover is simpler to change than two separate awards, because only one fee applies.

Where the limits sit#

Three conditions decide whether a routing is bookable at all.

The permitted connecting point. Programmes allow stopovers only at certain points, usually the hubs of the airlines involved. Inside an alliance the choice of permitted points is largest, as how airline alliances work shows; outside one the options shrink sharply.

Availability on each segment. Every part of the routing needs award space. One missing segment kills the whole booking, as how award availability works describes. In peak periods availability on every segment is thinner, and complex routings then fail more often on a single leg.

The direction. Some programmes allow the stopover only outbound, others only on round trips, and others in both directions. That restriction rarely appears prominently.

All three conditions can be checked in advance, and checking them is what separates a bookable routing from one that merely looks good on paper.

With separate bookings the same risk arises as with separate tickets, described in what applies with separate tickets. A missed connection is then your own problem.

When it is not worth building a routing#

The effort is not worth taking on in these situations:

• On simple routes. Flying out and back to the same place needs no special rules.
• When the surcharge equals a second ticket. Then two bookings are simpler.
• With scarce availability. The more segments, the higher the chance one is missing.
• With uncertain plans. A change can reprice the entire routing.
• When time is short. Complex routings need research and often a phone call, and that effort recurs with every booking.
• For larger groups. The more travellers, the less likely it is that every segment has enough award space.

On short routes the gain is small and the extra planning is out of proportion. The effort pays above all on long haul.

How to find such a booking#

Start with the rules, not the search mask. Check what the programme permits, then design the routing. Search availability segment by segment, ideally in a tool that displays partners, because only then is it clear whether the routing is bookable. Then book, frequently by phone.

Having the flight numbers and dates prepared keeps the call to a few minutes. Name the routing in order and with dates; that avoids callbacks and shortens the conversation considerably.

Following that order avoids the most common disappointment: a perfect routing that fails on one missing segment. Fewer segments give a higher hit rate, and a routing with one stopover is bookable far more often than one with two. Flexible planners also check two possible intermediate cities instead of one, since the chance that one of them works is far higher than with a single fixed wish.

Some programmes publish their routing rules in detail, others only in keywords. In case of doubt the service desk helps, and that answer belongs in writing. A short personal note is worth keeping for repeat bookings: which points are permitted, how long the stay may be, and in which direction it is allowed.

After a phone booking, ask for the full itinerary in writing and check each segment, because entry errors otherwise surface at the airport. Checking matters most on open jaws. The confirmation says nothing about the ground segment, and only the two flight records prove the routing sits in the system as planned.

What the rules say about a programme#

Generous routing rules point to an older programme with a fixed award chart. There the routing is part of the price. Dynamic programmes usually have no such rules; they price each segment separately, and a stopover is simply a second booking.

For the choice of programme, round-trip planners look specifically for routing rules, while somebody flying simple routes can ignore them. The value of such rules can be quantified by pricing the trip once with and once without the stopover, as what points are actually worth shows.

Having made one such booking changes how people plan. The question is no longer only where the trip goes but which second city belongs on the way. Routing is the one area where your own planning can double the value of a redemption without the price changing at all.

The most common mistakes#

• Booking two awards instead of one routing. The routing rules belong at the start of the planning, before any search.
• Overlooking the connection limit. A stay just over the permitted duration becomes a stopover, with whatever rules and surcharge that brings.
• Planning impermissible connecting points. Only the cities on the programme’s list work, and they are usually hubs.
• Forgetting availability per segment. Each leg is checked on its own, since one missing segment sinks the booking.
• Insisting on booking online. Complex routings frequently go through only by phone.
• Searching in dynamic programmes. Those rules usually do not exist there.

Related topics#

• Booking award flights with partners
• How award availability works
• What points are actually worth
• Changing an award ticket
• What does an airline alliance actually give me as a passenger?
• What applies with separate tickets
• Is a round-the-world ticket still worth buying?