Originally Posted by
xliioper
I see nothing in the fare rules about extending max layover times for domestic fares (AA has extended their's to 18 hours and it's in their fare rules). These are most likely simply broken fares. What's displayed in the fare rules (if it's a broken fare, it will have multiple fare components/basis codes)? I suspect they have just liberalized their search function to show more broken fare options. Google Flights/ITA and other OTA's will show these among the non-broken fare results, while delta.com fare search had only offered them up infrequently.
Perhaps, but for the average person searching, a distinction without a major difference? If it's more accurate to say "DL.com now returning itineraries with layovers greater than 4 hours" then so be it, but point being that I'm seeing domestic itineraries returned with greater than 4 hour connection times right now. That wasn't the case, even with broken fares, when searching DL.com just a couple days ago even (as you note, you could still find such itineraries searching through other sites like ITA Matrix and even use the Book with Matrix to generate the code to book it via DL.com, or you could find such itineraries through other OTAs or build such itineraries via Multi-City booking but the standard booking tool wouldn't return such itineraries).