What is the difference between Layover and Stopover

What is the difference between Layover and Stopover

2020, Dec 15    

Understanding airlines’ language is an essential skill every traveller should possess. Unfortunately, it doesn’t happen as often as it should. The airline terms are misunderstood and misinterpreted all the time. For example, many people don’t know the difference between a layover and a stopover.

To better plan a trip, you must understand what you’re getting into. Understanding simple things like a travel itinerary, what marketing carriers and operating carriers are, layovers, stopovers, open jaws, etc. can go a long way in terms of a relaxed and efficient trip.

In this post, we’ll go over the differences between layovers and stopovers. We’ll understand them from all different angles. We’ll also share helpful tips that you can use to save money while you travel and enjoy your journey more than ever in the process as well.

Layovers

The first thing we’re going to cover is layovers. It’s one of the most common terms used when purchasing an airline ticket. Layovers are simply a connection or connections between flights. They are often shorter than 24 hours. You can’t control the nature of the layover as it’s decided by the airlines and included in your travel itinerary.

In most cases, a cheap flight will have layovers. It’s a way for airlines to cut costs and offer better prices for passengers. If you’re a frequent traveller and scour through the flight booking websites regularly, you know how common layovers are.

In most cases, you have to change one or more aircraft during a layover. You might be able to continue your flight without changing your seat very rarely. Whether you have to change the aircraft or not, you don’t have to worry about checking in again. The operating carrier will provide you with all the boarding passes you might need during the flight.

Depending on the country of layover, you might or might not have to go through customs. In a high-security environment, you might have to face customs and recheck your luggage. It’s the same case with immigration as well. It varies from country to country and airport to airport around the world. If it’s a Codeshare flight, the process might be a little easier.

A common misconception among people is that you are not allowed to leave the airport during a layover. It’s not true. All airports allow you to leave at your discretion. The real question is, do you have the time to leave the airport? Also, you must have a visa to enter the country of your layover to pass immigration. You also have to go through security once you decide to come back in for your next flight.

To avoid the stress of missing your next flight, you can always opt for flights with longer layovers. In general, you should reserve an hour for domestic flights and two hours for international flights. This time is for the logistics at the airport such as security, customs, immigration, luggage check, etc. You can take the rest of your layover to explore a city or wander around the airport to try different cuisines, buy gifts for your loved ones, or simply take a nap.

No matter how long a layover is, it’s never a stopover. Stopovers are not included in the ticket price. Usually, people utilize layovers to explore a city to save a little money. But if you prefer convenience over cost, layovers aren’t for you.

Let’s understand layovers a little better with an example.

Let’s take the Toronto-Budapest flight. We’re going to use the same example in our tip to help you save money later in the post. Keep on reading so you don’t miss it.

When you decide to book a flight from Toronto to Budapest online, you will see multiple flights presented to you. If you look closely, you will see flights with stops in cities like Brussels, Lisbon, Istanbul, Munich, Vienna, etc.

These stops are known as layovers. The longer the layover is, the cheaper the flight tends to be.

Stopovers

The biggest difference between layovers and stopovers is that you have to pay for stopovers in most cases. On an international flight with a stopover, you get more than 24 hours to explore a city, and for domestic flights, it’s more than 4 hours.

Stopovers are great for travellers who want to cover as many destinations as possible on a limited time and budget. It might look like stopovers take longer for you to travel. But if you think of it as a vacation destination, you’ll realize that it’s taking you less time to travel to 2 destinations. It would have been a longer trip if you booked tickets for those 2 destinations separately.

Stopovers can be cheaper than direct flights as well. We know it’s contradicting our previous statement that you have to pay for a stopover. But most people don’t like to waste time during a flight. And airlines use this opportunity to charge more for direct flights.

You can save money and have fun at the same time if you opt for a stopover. You might get a layover at the same locations for cheaper, but layovers are often short and not enough to have an enjoyable exploration.

Depending on the airlines, you can find free stopovers on award tickets. With time, fewer and fewer airlines offer free stopovers as operational costs have gone up a lot in the last few years. There was a time when United Airlines, Delta, and American Airlines used to offer free stopovers. But now, only United Airlines offers free stopovers on international flights.

Let’s take an example from United Airlines as it’s the only one to offer a free stopover. If you’re planning to travel to Rome from New York, you’re looking at 60,000 miles for a direct round-trip flight. You can do the same with a 4-day stopover in London at the same cost. That’s how you use stopovers to kill two birds with one stone.

You might have to pay more in taxes at Heathrow Airport. It’s about $80, and it’s the most in Europe. But it’s still cheaper than paying for a direct flight where don’t even have to freedom to explore an additional city.

Bonus Content: Open Jaw

Just like layovers and stopovers, there’s another term in the airline’s language, the open jaw. It’s also applicable to award flights. The concept of the open-jaw award is that you fly to a city from an origin and return to it from a different one.

For example, you can fly from New York to Rome. But return from Verona to New York. If it seems viable to you in terms of time and money, you can opt for the open jaw. If you land in Rome and have plans to finish your trip in Verona, there’s no point in returning to Rome again just to catch a flight. Rather, you can use that time and money to explore more locations.

You can do the same with your country of departure as well. If you don’t want to return to New York, you can choose any other airport in the US with your open-jaw award.

Tips to Save Money on a Flight

Now, let’s save you some money while giving you an extra city to travel to. We’ll take the Toronto-Budapest trip for our example here as we previously mentioned. In general, a direct flight from Toronto to Budapest costs about $1,000. But you don’t have to pay it if you decide to utilize a stop in the middle.

Instead of looking for direct flights, find the cheapest flight to Europe. Let’s say it’s London. Toronto to London flight is somewhere in the neighbourhood of $600. From London, you can easily find $100 round trips to Budapest. You just saved $300 and added an extra destination in the process. You can use the extra $300 to explore London and still have some left for shopping.

Conclusion

Finding the right combination of travel itineraries often comes down to how well you know the methods. And understanding the language is a huge part of the process. People often mix layovers and stopovers while they are fundamentally different.

While layovers are good for saving money during the flight, a stopover can be your opportunity to get one more city under your belt. Now that you know the difference between the two, you can make your travel plans more carefully.