In the context of air travel, are layovers different to stopovers?

As a Travel Agent, layover means a short stop to change planes, typically required by the airline itinerary due to the connection schedule. A stopover is a voluntary extended stay overnight in a city to explore and spend time in the city. This is typical travel industry lingo.

Given this is a travel forum, the airline terminology is the best one.

A layover refers to a break between two flights taking you to your destination. Normally this would be short (a few hours), but the definition will vary depending on the airline and the route.

A stopover is where you actually break your your journey at a point that isn’t the destination for longer than the time allowed for a layover. Stopovers almost always have additional fees associated with them – not only from the airline, but also as you may end up paying additional taxes/airport/customs fees as a result of the longer stop.

How long a layover can be varies. Some US airlines for domestic legs will define it as less than 4 hours, OR the next available flight to you destination. ie, if the next available flight to your destination isn’t until 6 hours after you arrive, that would still be a valid layover – even through it is more than 4 hours. Many airlines will also allow a layover to extend overnight, again as long as that’s the next available flight out.

For International flights most airlines allow up to 24 hours count as a layover, and many countries also use 24 hours as the limit (eg, if you are in Singapore for less than 24 hours then you do not pay the taxes you would for a longer stop).

Personally I’ve used the international 24 hour rule countless times to be able to spend a day (and sometimes even a night!) in a country without having to pay for the stopover!

Edit: IATA () has a “Glossary of Terms” on their website. It’s doesn’t have a definition for Layover, but the definition for Stopover is :

Equivalent to a “break of journey”, means a deliberate interruption of
a journey by the passenger agreed to in advance by the airline, at a
point between the place of departure and the place of destination.

One important point I forgot to mention earlier is that many airlines will treat checked bags differently for a stopover v’s a layover/connection. By default, your bags will be checked to either your destination or your stopover point if there is one. Some airlines will allow you to “short-check” your bags to a layover/connection point, but many will not.

Oddly, in my head a stopover implied the plane merely stopped (for an hour) and a layover meant staying so that you could ‘lay’ – as in go to bed, not…the other meaning.

However, from online definitions:

lay·o·ver

noun /ˈlāˌōvər/ 
layovers, plural

A period of rest or waiting before a further stage in a journey

stop·o·ver

noun /ˈstäpˌōvər/ 
stopovers, plural

A break in a journey
– the one-day stopover in Honolulu

A place where a journey is broken
– an inviting stopover between Quebec City and Montreal

So those definitions certainly seem to define stopover as being the longer one.

However I do agree that over the years, the differentiation has decreased and definitions blurred.

There are two issues here: what people mean, and what airlines mean.

Airlines vary, but generally they mean layover to mean you changing planes for their reasons. They don’t fly from London to Venice, for example, so they fly you London to Frankfurt then Frankfurt to Venice. You might have an hour or two in the airport to change planes. They mean stopover to mean something you choose to do, like if you want a day or two in London on your trip from Toronto to Frankfurt. Typically they will allow you one free stopover (or two) but not more. Layovers, being a more technical issue, are not limited.

Some people do clever things, if they’r on a routing that involves a layover, like coming in at 2pm and going out at 10 am (less than 24 hours) giving themselves an afternoon and evening in the layover city for free. This is where you see people making a strong distinction between layover and stopover. It was a layover to the airline, so it didn’t cost anything, but the person got the goodies we usually associate with a stopover.

Other people just say layover when they don’t leave the airport, for a short connection, and stopover when they do leave the airport and spend some time in the actual city. Or they’ll use stopover if it’s overnight. You can’t be sure what someone means, but it probably doesn’t matter much. The words are very similar when they don’t affect the fare you paid for your flight.