Originally Posted by jsloan

You’re not quite looking at that properly, though. You don’t (can’t, really) change one leg at a time. SDC is going to change from one SFO-LAX-BOS to another SFO-XXX-BOS itinerary. So in order to try to get a stopover at LAX, you’d first change to an SFO-LAX-BOS itinerary, and then, after flying SFO-LAX, you’d change to a later LAX-BOS flight, potentially including the one you’re currently on, which you would have had to change.

There’s no need to read your fare rules — for flights within the continental US, UA doesn’t allow any stopovers on discount tickets — pretty much anything below a Y fare — and a stopover is always created if the transfer time is more than 4 hours. Thee used to be an exception — more than 4 hours or the next available flight — but that hasn’t been the case in a long time. You can still try asking for it, though — try switching to a 10 PM flight departing SFO to LAX, connecting to a 6 AM flight to BOS the next morning — but be prepared to be told no.


Agreed, you can standby, but getting onto the list and through security the previous calendar day is often a challenge.

How much does it cost to book two separate tickets — SFO-LAX and LAX-BOS? Especially if you’re not traveling for a while, it may be easier just to book what you’d actually like to fly.