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The Great Hunt: What flights have 'hidden' stopovers?

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Former_MSE_Sam_M
Former_MSE_Sam_M Posts: 346 Forumite
edited 20 October 2015 at 11:08AM in Flights, currency & car hire
MSE Nick recently thought he'd snagged a bargain-priced flight to Bali with one stopover in Jakarta, only to discover when he got to the airport that it also stopped in Amsterdam to 'refuel'.

We want to know what flight routes and airlines have disguised stopovers.

Have you experienced any?
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Comments

  • Not sure if they still do it but we had the same thing travelling to ball with Qatar. Scheduled stop over in doha, but then stopped to refuel (for about 30 mins) in Kuala lumpur hadn't been expecting that one!
  • Back in 2004 i went to Australia on Malaysian Airlines and i knew there was a touchdown in Penang before onwards to Kuala Lumpur. After an 8 hour layover and en route to Perth i was unaware of a touchdown in Kuching which added even more time onto what was a marathon of a journey!
  • dushanko
    dushanko Posts: 10 Forumite
    The MSE staff flew with Garuda Indonesia who operate their service from Gatwick to Jakarta via Amsterdam. I recently spoke to a manager who works for Garuda andI asked why they stop in Amsterdam and he said the reason is the Jakarta runway is not strong enough to take completely full tank of fuel on take off on the way to London so they need to stop in Amsterdam to refuel. It is also a clever way how to serve two destinations with one plane at the same time on the so called "thin routes", where they might struggle to fill up the plane.


    Many other airlines do stop in their long haul operations. BA flies to Abu Dhabi and then the same plane goes to Muscat in Oman and they have many destination with a stop in Caribbean, however they are marked as direct flights.
    You will not encounter this issue with on low-cost airlines as they only operate point-to-point flights. This tactic is also very common in US and it is all about wording. I bought a flight from New York to LA, which said DIRECT and it made a stop in Dallas. You need to look for wording which says NON-STOP, rather than direct. The flight, which makes the stop even keep the same flight number for both legs and is allowed to take on new passengers at the stop, however the stops are usually under one hour and you do not change the plane and you are allowed to stay in in some cases.


    BA service from London City to NC also makes a refuel stop in Shannon, as London City runway is too short and fully loaded plane would not take off from the short runway (but they are fine to land, as the tank is almost empty by the time they reach London from New York, therefore no stop on the return).
  • I have just recently booked a holiday. teletext holidays offered the cheapest prices for holidays. On phoning teletext holidays most holidays advertised required at least 2 flight changes, one took 14hours from Newcastle too Tenerife!!!!
  • Yes, I thought that I had learned to ask for a non-stop direct flight to prevent these sort of issues.

    So I booked what I thought was a non-stop direct flight to Cape Town, South Africa.

    It was only some weeks later when the tickets arrived with an itinerary that I found that there was a stop at Johannesburg...

    Perhaps some Travel industry insiders can explain what specific wording I should use so that I would be made aware of all 'stops'?

    I guess the other alternative is to research the total flight time and ask how long your flights are - if they seem too long you need to ask why.
  • Voyager2002
    Voyager2002 Posts: 16,249 Forumite
    Part of the Furniture 10,000 Posts Name Dropper Combo Breaker
    Surely what matters is the time that the journey takes, rather than whether or not the 'plane lands somewhere on the way. So long as the departure and arrival times are as advertised I cannot see what difference this makes (apart from the opportunity to try out a different duty-free shop and perhaps find some unexpected bargains).
  • I`ll second what voyager 2002 says.
    Check your total flight time.
    You can do a run thru of a booking prior to giving passenger details etc and get a breakdown of the flight, stop-overs, whether you need to change planes, stop-over destination, ie doha, abhu dabhi, sometimes a simple splash n dash to Singapore will land, the cleaners will scurry on and do a quick whizz round whilst more fuel goes in, we`ve variously been de-planed and literally walked just 200 yards before being called back for boarding as well as let the cleaners try and clear trash whilst we stayed on-board, you should be made aware before you book just where any lay-overs might occur, this wont necessarily involve being told about a splash n dash.
    1st time I booked uk to oz with Emirates we had an 8 hr overnite lay over which I hadn't checked, most times now, the total flight time is the 1st thing we check together with landing time as we don't want friends/relatives getting up in the middle of the night to pick us up from an airport lol. I think the only thing I`ve ever bought from a duty free is a monster toblerone lol, but then again I don't drink.
  • GwylimT
    GwylimT Posts: 6,530 Forumite
    1,000 Posts Combo Breaker
    We fly Royal Brunei to Borneo, there is a stop over in dubai to change staff and refuel, it takes around 30-40 minutes, obviously this is included in the journey time and its quite nice to have a quick change of scenery.
  • Going to Sydney in the New Year, stopping off 2 nights in Singapore, Travel agent told me I had to pay extra for the flight, because I was breaking my flight, is that correct.
  • I can't remember the details because I fly to Australia from either Paris or Heathrow twice a year and my memory isn't what it was. Basically, I flew with Virgin/Quantas and there was the usual scheduled stop of a couple of hours. On the itinerary it also stated that there would be a fuel stop without a time being specified. Myself and many other passengers assumed that we would be staying on the plane. In the event we had to get off and go through security where those passengers who had bought alcohol in the previous stop over had their bottles confiscated. I assumed that this was because the bottles were bigger than the allowed amount, though it was a Muslin country.
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