Originally Posted by
Canarsie
By my experience, a good way to get a free stopover is to purposely schedule yourself on the first flight segment of your flight where it arrives too late that day for you to embark on the second flight segment in time, forcing you to stay at the destination of the first flight segment overnight and catch the next flight segment the next day.
An alternative to that method is to ensure that there are no seats available on the second flight segment for that day, forcing you to take that second flight segment later or the next day.
On many airlines, it's a lot simpler than described above. For international itineraries, many airlines define a stopover as a break in travel of 24 hours or more. So, a break of less than 24 hours is not even considered a stopover but just a connection. You can have as many of these along a valid routing as the schedule will allow.