Originally Posted by
fredshino
Another question, my GRU-SDU leg, operated by Azul, was changed by an hour. I'm thinking about staying one night in Sao Paulo so I called UA and asked to be put on a different flight on the next day and the lady said she couldn't because staying more than 24h in Sao Paulo would be considered a stopover and that is not allowed outside of the US.
Is this true?
If yes, could I cancel this GRU-SDU leg and make this an open-jaw trip? Outbound IAD-GRU, Inbound SDU-GRU-IAD? Without paying any fees, obviously.
Thanks
Whether or not a stopover is allowed is fare dependent, but the agent is correct that any transfer longer than 24 hours on an itinerary outside of the US and Canada constitutes a stopover*. (Inside the US and Canada, a 4 hour stop* becomes a stopover).
If you can make a reasonable argument about the flight time being inconvenient — e.g., public transit wouldn’t be available with your new arrival or something like that — you can probably get them to drop the leg without recomputing the fare or charging a fee.
* Unless you take the next outbound flight to your destination, in which case no stopover occurs; this covers overnight domestic transfers as well as locations that have infrequent service. However, UA hasn’t been pricing this properly online recently, so something may have changed in the last year or so.