Icelandair sells the idea directly: a stop of up to seven days in Reykjavik at no extra airfare, on a ticket that was routing through Keflavik anyway. TAP Portugal does the same for Lisbon and Porto, and Turkish Airlines runs a stopover programme in Istanbul. The offer works because the connection was already happening, and the airline would rather you spent two nights in the city than four hours in the terminal.
You do not need an official programme to do it. Book two flights instead of one, pick a city that has nonstop service from both your origin and your destination, and the layover becomes a short second trip. The routing question is which cities qualify.
Airline stopover programmes
Icelandair, TAP and Turkish are the best-known, and a few other carriers run similar offers through their hubs. The mechanics are the same in each case: the fare is built as one ticket with a long gap in the middle, so the flights stay protected as a single itinerary and the stop costs you nothing beyond the hotel.
The limitation is that a programme only offers its own hub. If Reykjavik, Lisbon or Istanbul is not on a sensible path between your two cities, the programme has nothing for you and the do-it-yourself version is the only option.
Montreal to Taipei with a stop in Istanbul
There is no nonstop between Montreal and Taipei, so the trip involves a connection somewhere regardless: Vancouver, Tokyo or a US hub, with a sprint through a terminal in the middle.
Istanbul is an alternative worth pricing. It has nonstop service from Montreal and nonstop service to Taipei, so the same journey splits into two flights with a night in between. You land, check into a hotel, walk through the Grand Bazaar, eat by the Bosphorus, and fly on the next morning. The trip is one day longer and the second leg starts after a night’s sleep.
How to find your stopover city
The part that takes the time is working out which cities sit on a reasonable path with nonstop service from both ends. Cross-referencing airline route maps by hand is where most people give up.
Midway answers the same question in one search. Enter your origin and your final destination and it returns every city with nonstop flights from both, which is the list of stopover candidates. It shows the routes and the flight times; it does not know whether you need a transit visa or an entry stamp for the country you are stopping in, and for some passports that check changes the answer.
A few cities come up repeatedly as stops between North America and Asia:
- Paris or London. Well connected to both continents, and a day in either is easy to fill.
- Dubai or Doha. Large hubs with modern airports and nonstop service to most of the world.
- Tokyo. If Taipei is the destination anyway, a night in Tokyo first changes the shape of the trip.
A stop compared with a layover
A three-hour airport layover and a 24-hour city stop are different things in three respects.
Sleep. A hotel bed against an airport chair is the obvious difference, and it compounds: you arrive at the final destination able to use the first day.
Time zones. Montreal is UTC-5, Istanbul is UTC+3 and Taipei is UTC+8. Stepping through the shift in two moves is easier on most people than a 13-hour jump in one.
Cost. Two one-way flights sometimes come in under a single round trip with connections, particularly with flexible dates. Low-cost carriers on European and Middle Eastern legs often do not appear in multi-city searches at all.
The trade-off is protection. Two separate tickets are two separate contracts, so a delay on the first leg is your problem rather than the airline’s. Leave a night rather than a few hours between them, and the risk mostly goes away.
Shorter routes
The same routing works well below the 15-hour mark. New York to Rome can stop in Lisbon. Los Angeles to Tokyo can stop in Honolulu, which splits the flight almost in half and adds a beach day. Within Europe, Paris to Athens can include a night in Milan.
Route maps change through the year, so a stopover city that works in July may not have the same service in November. The meet in the middle guide covers how to check a month before fixing the dates.
How to book it
- Find the candidates. Use a search that returns cities with nonstop flights from both your origin and your destination.
- Pick one you want to spend a day in. Not every hub is interesting, and the stop only pays for itself if the city does.
- Book two separate flights. Origin to stopover, then stopover to destination, with at least one night in between.
- Keep the stop simple. A hotel near the centre, one good meal and a walk is enough for 24 hours.
A stopover costs a day and one hotel night. That is easy to absorb on a two-week trip and expensive on a five-day one, which is the trade-off to settle before booking either leg.