Just noticed a voice mail message I missed earlier while playing phone tag with SkiAdcock. When she was in her car en route to ORD she called UA a second time after I had suggested the backup 1630 ORD-IAD-FRA routing when ORD-FRA on UA at 1830 was zeroed out. She got an agent in the HNL call center who set her up for those flights in case she did miss her original 1430 ORD-FRA. As luck would have it, she did not have to hang around for these later flights. Guess it pays to keep on calling.

I'll do the overnight stay in the middle when I have separate tickets (like a SFO-LHR followed by a LHR-FRA) just in case I'm delayed leaving the U.S. Just not willing to risk a misconnect when I buy two separate tickets to get a better fare. I've gone down to SFO a few hours early when I've noticed weather delays and got an earlier flight out, but you won't see me there the night before. Most of my Europe itineraries connect somewhere in the U.S. just for the extra miles.