It would be helpful to know the route you are looking at. For many domestic routes between larger stations, only one stop is permitted and trying to add more than that will create a broken fare and you'll end up paying multiple fares. Further, the cheapest fares often prohibit end-on-end ticketing and this will bump you into a higher fare class when trying to book the broken fares as a single ticket. For smaller, less well served stations, they may allow up to two connections. International routes will typically allow more than this. ITA Matrix advance routing codes can be used to specify number of segments (i.e. DL DL DL for 3 segments on DL).
Originally Posted by
FBplatinum
Departure from Montreal, Canada (YUL)
To Shanghai, China (PVG)
I try to find a 4 segments flights (both way).
I do this for my MQM (to reach Diamond).
I was successful (on ITA Matrix) to quickly find an example four segment trip:
3/4: YUL-DTW-MSP-SEA-PVG
3/6: PVG-LAX-MCO-LGA-YUL
for 807 CAD. I used ITA's advanced routing codes and specified "DL DL DL" (three segments). This search returned both three segment and four segment routes for some reason.