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Assume a multi-city flight between 3 airports was purchased on https://www.singaporeair.com with an international transit/stopover/layover at Singapore Changi Airport of x hours. What's Singapore Airlines' recheck luggage policy? I.e., is picking up and rechecking one's checked-in luggage at Singapore Changi Airport impossible, optional or mandatory?

Related question: Will my luggage transfer during an 18h layover in Changi?. In my case, I'm also interested in the cases when:

  1. The transit/stopover/layover is longer, eg 24h, 48h, or a few days. At some point, I assume that Singapore Airlines will start giving back the checked-in luggage at Singapore Changi Airport. I wonder at what point. E.g., does Singapore Airlines give the checked-in luggage iff the stop in Singapore is >24h?
  2. The transit/stopover/layover is the the same or shorter than 18h but the passenger wants to get back the checked-in luggage at Singapore Changi Airport. Is that an option?
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  • Title says transit but body includes stopover and layover. Are you really interested in transit which at Changi means not going through immigration/customs and (currently) having your bags tagged with their final destination?
    – mkennedy
    Mar 11, 2022 at 0:39
  • @mkennedy thanks good point. I'm not sure how to call it. I'm considering the case of a multi-city flight between 3 airports, with the Singapore Changi Airport in-between. I am trying to understand whether picking up and rechecking one's checked-in luggage at Singapore Changi Airport impossible, optional or mandatory.
    – Franck Dernoncourt
    Mar 11, 2022 at 0:55
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    Does this answer your question? Will my luggage transfer during an 18h layover in Changi?
    – Greg Hewgill
    Mar 11, 2022 at 1:24
  • @GregHewgill thanks, I'm also interested when the transit/stopover/layover is longer, eg 24h, 48h, or a few days. At some point Singapore Airlines will start giving back by the luggage at Singapore Changi Airport. I wonder at what point.
    – Franck Dernoncourt
    Mar 11, 2022 at 1:37

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This is actually the main difference between a stopover and a layover.

A stopover is when there is an interruption in your travel, you get your checked luggage, exit the airport, usually spend a night or more in a hotel or elsewhere, then check in again when you resume your travel. The airline will tag your luggage with the stopover location as the final destination, you will usually only get boarding passes for the flights up to that point, and they will check you have the required paperwork to enter the country of the stopover.

A layover is the opposite: your luggage is transferred and you usually don’t even see it (with the usual caveats like at the first point of entry in the US). You are not really expected to exit the airport (though you usually can). Luggage will be tagged through to the final destination, you will often get all boarding passes, and they will check paperwork for entry into the final destination country, but only for transit for the layover point.

The usual criterion used is 24 hours between arrival and departure. Under that it’s usually a layover and above that a stopover.

A stopover also means that if there are operational issues and they have to reroute you, they will reroute you to the point of stopover, while for a layover they may simply change the itinerary and completely skip the layover point to get you to your final destination.

Basically a stopover breaks your trip in multiple parts exactly like the outbound and inbound parts of a return ticket.

Note that for many airlines, stopovers are not possible for all fares, and require more expensive fares. Other airlines on the contrary will encourage stopovers, usually in cooperation with local tourism authorities, with promotional hotel deals and the like.

Whether it’s a layover or stopover is usually determined at booking time. Check-in staff will often inquire to confirm what your final destination of the day is, but I’m not sure what flexibility they have in changing things (though this is probably quite variable depending on the airline, the fare and the actual time between flights).

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    @FranckDernoncourt Rule of thumb is, if you can book the fare as a regular return, it's layovers only. Stopovers need to be booked via the multi-city booking option or a travel agent.
    – lambshaanxy
    Mar 11, 2022 at 13:20
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    +1, but you might want to mention "short checking", where your bags are checked through only to the layover point. This is getting increasingly rare though and I doubt SQ would allow it.
    – lambshaanxy
    Mar 11, 2022 at 13:22
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    Another big difference: with a layover, airlines can reroute in cases an operations problem. With a stopover, they have to deliver you to the mid point. Stop overs don't need to be 24 hour, you can make them as short are you think you can get away with.
    – Hilmar
    Mar 11, 2022 at 14:29
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    Prices for stop overs vary dramatically with fare rules: from free to 1000s of dollars. Booking those is a bit of an art. Sometimes its best to look for round trips and scan the fare rules for "stopover permitted" or "first stopover free" etc. This often yields better results than a multi-city search.
    – Hilmar
    Mar 11, 2022 at 14:34
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    Bizarrely, some airlines explicitly mention stop-overs only when you book award flights (in cases when it's actually relevant). IIRC that's the case of BA and CX at least, there may be others. I know I've used stop-overs a lot in HKG or SIN when I used to travel between Europe and Australia quite a bit.
    – jcaron
    Mar 11, 2022 at 17:34

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