Korean Air’s SKYPASS program has announced that effective July 1st 2020 free stopovers on award tickets will no longer be permitted. The July 1st, 2020 is the flight date, rather than the booking by date which is sometimes the case. Currently you’re allowed one stop over in each direction. It looks like you’ll still be able to do stop overs with other SkyTeam members, but those flights are subject to a separate award chart and must be round trip.
Hat tip to Traveling For Miles
https://www.koreanair.com/content/koreanair-mobile/global/en/notice/2019_12_SKYPASS.html
There is going to be a huge change on skypass program
Doesn’t sting as much since they are no longer a UR partner, but to me this is a really strange move. I would think as the flag carrier at a major transit hub, they would want to encourage tourism in Korea. I took advantage of the free stopover previously to stay a night in Seoul, when otherwise I would have just continued on. What exactly is the downside for them? It’s not like allowing a stopover costs them anything.
It doesn’t cost them anything. But it may be valuable to some people. And if it’s worth something to some people, they want to extract money for that.
It might make logistics more difficult for them though, and that would translate to money. It may be easier if you have the same number of passengers in and then out, but it’s just a speculation.
I gotta give them credit that they gave plenty of warning