This may be a obvious question, but I just have no experiance with it.

I have a CO ticketed flight heading from Portland, OR to Birmingham, AL. The first routing is PDX-IAH-ATL-BHM. the last segment is a codeshare on DL Kind of painful, but a cheap flight. The homebound routing is the standard BHM-IAH-PDX

I just discovered a meeting I would like to be at is in Atlanta on the day I will be flying through. What will happen if I get "lost" in Atlanta making my connection and just show up later in the week at BHM for my flight home? I think I remember this is not kosher, but was not sure.