Originally Posted by
cbn42
I had a similar problem once and it turned out to be a time zone issue. I had booked SYD-LAX and the e-mail said it would be held until 11:59 PM, Eastern Standard Time. Turns out Australia also has a time zone called Eastern Standard Time.
Was the origin of this itinerary out of the US? If so, that is the most likely explanation.
If the outbound flight is in a different time zone then the 23:59 cutoff time is calculated from that time zone. Two of my recent holds I had to be careful about this as I had to manually calculate what time midnight there would mean for my zone. I think that domestic USA flight holds have a 23:59 deadline EST. Sometimes you have more than 24 hours since in domestic holds they calculate ending the hold 23:59 of the day after the hold is made so it theoretically can be a 47 hour hold if you book at 01:00 EST. That extra time seems to be only for domestic whereas flights originating outside USA seem to be held to a strict 24 hours from moment of hold policy.
Last edited by oaken; Dec 30, 2016 at 10:53 am