Tatsuhiko Miyagawa's Blog

Life Hack with stopover

May 07, 2008

As a frequent flyer I always have been wondering how useful this “stopover” thing is and how you can abuse it. Originally I was thinking that it’s just to stay over 24 hours on the airports en route, so it’s like stopping by Chicago for a day if you fly to Paris. Actually it is, but you can do more by abusing it.The first thing that come to my mind is that when I fly from San Francisco to Japan and then to Taiwan to attend to a conference or hacking in Taipei city. If you book separately SFO-NRT and NRT-TPE like I always do, it’s like $1400 + $500 in this season. However, if you book SFO-TPE on ANA and ask for a stopover in NRT (because the flight stops via NRT anyway), it’s just $1400 + $100 (ANA charges $100 per stopover). You can stop by Tokyo as long as you want, up to 3 months. Another advanced technique is to use stopover is to combine that with your mileage awards and purchase the air ticket issued in Taipei/Seoul. For instance, I can get the round-trip NRT-TPE economy award, valid for 1 year with 15,000 miles (ticket A). You can then book a flight TPE-HNL (via NRT) 1 year open, with stopover at NRT, for $850 (ticket B). Now you can do things like this (dates are made up randomly):

  • June 15: NRT -> TPE (A)- (tourism in Taipei city)- June 18: TPE -> HNL via NRT (B)- (relaxed in Honolulu for 4 days)- June 22: HNL -> NRT (B)- (4 months stop over at Narita. Maybe back and forth to San Francisco for business trip)- Oct 10: NRT -> TPE (B)- (another tourism in Taipei)- Oct 13: TPE -> NRT (A)So you get two Taipei trips and one Hawaii trip for $850 and 15,000 miles (obviously not including fees for hotels). The point is that 1) Use your mileage award because it gives you 1 year valid ticket which is very expensive usually and 2) Buy tickets from Taiwan or Seoul because it’s extra cheap with 1 year open dates.And yes, I can do this while I go to Japan with my business/private trip (paid by the company, Yay). Maybe I’ll try next time… This time the schedule is a bit tight so I’m thinking of going to somewhere in Japan. And actually flying to anywhere in Japan is $110 if you fly from USA, which is still a good deal as well.