Apparently, you guys are really interested in seeing how we did the stopovers in Hong Kong and Tokyo with the $736 fare from San Francisco to Shanghai from yesterday’s post about which airlines are best for stopovers by region.
This post will be ITA heavy, so you probably should take some time and read the following posts by us to understand the basics:
- Beginner’s Guide on How to Use Matrix by ITA Software
- How to Read Airfare Rules and Use It to Your Advantage
- How to Take Advantage of a Stopover
- How to ticket a quasi-complex ticket
Hong Kong – Photo: Markylim via Flickr, used under Creative Commons License (By 2.0)
Basic – Shanghai Fare Rule:
Before we get started, let’s have the basic fare rule for the Shanghai fare:
- Valid for travel on the outbound until December 11th with a 6 day minimum stay. Two stopovers are permitted for $100 each. One per direction, none in Guam.
How to Search:
Here’s what we did to find availability for travel between San Francisco and Shanghai. We used a date range of 5-12 days.
Based on this, we will be using a sample travel date of November 10th – 19th. Per the How to Take Advantage of a Stopover guide, we recommend that you look for stopovers within dates when there’s availability. So here’s what we did:
This ITA construction is through trial and error. Initially, we had it as 4 segments:
- San Francisco – Hong Kong
- Hong Kong – Shanghai
- Shanghai – Tokyo
- Tokyo – San Francisco
However, when we did that, it was pricing it as a San Francisco to Hong Kong // Shanghai to San Francisco fare plus one-way from Hong Kong to Shanghai. That priced over $1,050, we knew was incorrect as the stopover pricing should’ve been $100 per stopover plus taxes and fees. So instead, we tried it as three segments:
- San Francisco to Shanghai with a connection in Hong Kong. We forced a connection of at least 3,600 minutes. That’s what the /minconnect 3600 is. The ua hkg before /minconnect 3,600 is telling ITA to look for United flight to Hong Kong then a minimum connection of 3,600 minutes before heading to Shanghai. We figured 60 hours is sufficient for Hong Kong. You can try different values — it just has to be in minutes.
- Shanghai to Tokyo.
- Tokyo to San Francisco. We forced a United flight.
Here’s the result:
ITA priced this at $834. As you can see, the fare construction is still San Francisco to Shanghai roundtrip on the Fare 1 and Fare 2 section. So why isn’t this over $934? Sometimes it happens.
How to Price:
So let’s price it. Using tips from How to ticket a quasi-complex ticket, we used Hipmunk and multi-city to see if it would price properly:
Notice we entered it as 4 segments with carrier specified for 3 of the segments. Hipmunk can replicate most ITA codes, but don’t have the option to do a carrier, then connection airport with a minimum connection time. So that’s why we did each segment individually. That’s how we got it to price. Other variation will probably work too.
Hipmunk was able to replicate the exact routing and pricing as ITA. It then re-directed us to United.com to book.
And United.com priced it perfectly. If you went and entered the segments yourself on United.com without going through Hipmunk, it probably would not price it like this. And as an added bonus, we set the actual time in Shanghai to 2 and 1/2 days — or no visa required if you are an American passport holder.
Conclusion:
- Stopovers are trial and error
- Learn ITA
- Play around with dates within availability to see if stopovers exist
- If it does, use Hipmunk to replicate the routing to see if it will price
- For an extra $100, you will get two more cities in. That’s a win!
This should be a useful set of steps that you can take to build stopovers for tickets originating from other cities. We hope you all found this useful. If you do and there’s enough interest, we will do more of these once a while.
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Background Information:
China:
- Visa: US Citizens – required prior to arrival. $140. Other nationals, check the TIMATIC Visa Database
- Currency: Chinese Yuan Renminbi (CNY) – $1USD = 6.08 CNY
- How to Visit Shanghai or Beijing for Up to 72 Hours without a Visa
Hong Kong:
- Visa: US Citizens – Not required. Other nationals, check the TIMATIC Visa Database
- Currency: Hong Kong Dollar (HKD). $1USD = 7.8 HKD
Japan:
- Visa: US Citizens – Not required. Other nationals, check the TIMATIC Visa Database
- Currency: Japanese Yen (JYP) $1USD = 108.66 JPY
Tips for saving when using credit cards at international destinations:
- No Foreign Transaction Fee Credit Cards to save on international purchases
- Don’t get hit with Dynamic Currency Conversion
- Get your taxes refunded when shopping
- How to Avoid International Data Roaming Charges
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This is extremely helpful!! I’m totally into travel hacking and appreciate information like this. Please do more of these. Something to look forward to;)
Yes, very helpful!
Wow. This boggles my mind. Amazing!
Loved it! I believe that once peeps see just how great a tool ITA can, they will take the time to learn more than the basics. Showing the step by steps, such as in this post, will open eyes. Thanks and keep them coming.
@Rings – indeed. taking an hour or two to learn it = tons of downstream saving potentials.
I wonder if this works for LAX in December
@Daniel – there is an $820ish United LAX – Shanghai fare for travel until mid-December. You can play around with it and see if it works. Every fare is different. Read our ITA, fare rules and how to take advantage of a stopover guide to see if it works.
On any given itinerary, how do you know which cities the stopovers are allowed? It would be hard for most people to see a SFO to Shanghai round trip flight deal on United, and be able to guess which cities would be allowed for stopovers.
@Brandon — the easiest way is via a paid subscription to ExpertFlyer (www.expertflyer.com) for about $100 a year. That would provide you legal routings for each fare (and thus you can see what the potential stopovers are). Otherwise, its trial and error. But if you don’t want to pay, here’s how you can make it less challenging:
1) Figure out where the carrier operated for the most significant segment (in this case US – Asia). We use wikipedia.org for that. Just go to each of the carrier’s hubs. For United for example, out of San Francisco, they fly to Beijing, Chengdu, Hong Kong, Osaka, Seoul, Shanghai, Taipei, Tokyo nonstop and Singapore and Ho Chi Minh City via Hong Kong, also Singapore and Taipei via Tokyo.
2) Based on that, let says the fare is to Singapore, the routing possibilities will probably be SFO – Hong Kong – Singapore – Tokyo – SFO. But it is also possible they could be SFO – Seoul – Singapore – Hong Kong – SFO or San Francisco to Taipei to Singapore to Ho Chi Minh to Hong Kong to San Francisco. A lot of trial and error.
Hope that helps.
Another question: how easy is it to get an expedited visa, and how long would that take?
@Brandon – expedited visa for what country? If its for China at least in NY, at the moment its 2 days. We have no experience with China’s consulates in other cities.
Is $1,269 a deal if I were to travel LAX > HKG > PEK > PEK > NRT > LAX?
@Daniel – with stopovers or without? and with what carrier?
The price for $1,249 is with the stopovers.
I chose UA for the carrier.
@Daniel – the UA fare we see for LAX – PEK is $842 for travel this year. with stopovers, it should be no more than ~1,100 at most ($200 for the two stopovers + taxes and fees). it is ~1,000 for next year, so 1,200 sounds about right. would wait for a sale if its travel next year, theres always sales to China.
Thank you for your help!