How to use airline stopover programs

Stopovers are the best way to visit an extra city or country during your trip.

Some airlines allow long layovers between 24 hours and 10 days to spend time anywhere you’re flying through. These are usually at an airline’s hub city or the capital city of an airline’s home country. A stopover might give you two vacations for the price of one.

When planning international travel, regardless of where you’re going, check if you can fly one of these airlines.

Note: I don’t get kickbacks or commissions from any of these airlines.

Here are the top ten airlines that offer stopovers.

how to use airline stopover programs — I’ll book with Copa for one of my next trips between North & South America so I can stopover in Panama.

Copa Air

If you love tropical islands, fascinating engineering and Spanish architecture, check if you can fly Copa on your next trip. I flew Copa from Seattle to Colombia a few years ago and would have taken advantage of their stopover program if I had known about it. This is the only airline in the Americas that has a stopover program, and you can stay up to 7 days, plenty of time to enjoy the capital city, visit the canal and spend a couple days on a Caribbean island. The $50 stopover fee is included (hidden) in your airfare.

Even after I didn’t live there anymore, I still flew Turkish between Europe and Asia so I could get a stopover in Istanbul.

Turkish Airlines

The Istanbul stopover program is one of the few that includes free hotels, for one to three nights, depending on your ticket. (If you fly business class, you get three nights). I love Istanbul’s food, history, archeology and nearby islands and beaches. If there’s any way you can fly Turkish on your next trip, I highly recommend taking as many days as possible in Istanbul. I lived there for a year and still didn’t get to see everything. Check out my Türkiye blogs for more ideas on what to do with a stopover in Istanbul and see the details of how to get free hotels on this airline page.

Iberia Airlines

If you can’t decide between Spain and France or Italy for your next Europe trip, look into Iberia’s stopover program. You can spend up to 9 nights in Madrid on your way to just about anywhere in Europe. The “Hola Madrid” program gets you discounts on hotels, restaurants and attractions throughout the city, but no big freebies.

how to plan a stopover when traveling — If you have a short stopover, pack everything you need in your carryon in case your checked luggage is delayed.

TAP Air Portugal

You can spend up to ten days in Portugal with a TAP Airlines stopover. Portugal is in the news a lot as being less saturated with tourism than Spain’s Barcelona, though I still recommend booking TAP flights outside of the June-August busy season. When booking your flight, look for the “add stopover” button which lets you choose a stopover in either Lisbon or Porto. You can also pick if you want the stopover on the outbound or return flight. I spent only a week in Portugal on my last trip and highly recommend taking all ten days if you have the time.

Finnair

Summer trips to Europe can include up to five days in Helsinki for no extra cost if you book with Finnair. Just use the “multi-city” function when booking your flights on their website and you can schedule your stopover in Helsinki. The airline doesn’t subsidize hotels or meals but they have created stopover itineraries for 6-, 1-2 and 24-hour stays.

Iceland stopover travel program — I’m still kicking myself for living five years in Seattle without taking advantage of the Icelandair stopover program.

Icelandair

I lived in Seattle for five years before moving to Peru and somehow never visited the sister city Reykjavik. If you fly Icelandair you and add a stopover of 1-7 days on flights between North America to Europe. If, like Seattle, your departure city has direct flights to Keflavik and Reykjavik, this is a very easy way to check out geysers, glaciers and volcanoes all on the same trip.

Japan Airlines

You may not get free hotels in Japan, but the variety of cities that qualify for this stopover program makes it different from most countries. Choose between popular tourist destinations like Osaka, Kyoto, Nagano and Okinawa. Also check out the Japan Explorer Pass that gives you discounted domestic flights to more than 30 cities in Japan.

Ethiopian Airlines

If you’re considering a trip to eastern or southern Africa, check if there are flights on Ethiopian. They have one of the very few stopover programs in Africa and offer one night in a hotel in Addis Ababa. Especially if you’re planning the kind of trip that is out in nature the whole time, like a safari, you can see something totally different in Ethiopia’s capital. Plan a layover of 8-24 hours and ask for a hotel voucher from the airline before boarding or at the customer service desk once you arrive in Addis Ababa. You’ll also get free transfers to and from the hotel, unless they book you in the Skylight Hotel which is accessible from the airport’s international arrivals.

Etihad Airways

If you book flights going through Abu Dhabi, a stopover gets you 1-2 nights free in a 3-star hotel, but hotels are not guaranteed, and you have to do the work of making the reservation. See the details of Etihad’s program here. After you book your flights, they’ll send you a voucher that you present when you check in at your hotel.

Qatar

I put Qatar last because although they have a stopover program, I had a terrible experience the last time I went through Qatar. We were on a crowded shuttle bus across the tarmac from the airport to the plane for over an hour each way, but they’ve done a major remodel since then, so hopefully nobody has to deal with that anymore. I think it’s still worth checking out and you can get 1-4 days in Doha with highly subsidized hotels. Though it’s not free like Türkiye, they offer such great deals they might as well be, with 4-star hotels as little as $14 per person.