Flight Connection Question
 

Okay, In a month, I am leaving the country for five weeks. On the way home, my flight goes Beijing-Seattle-Atlanta-Nashville. I recently found out that I have an important meeting in Atlanta the day after I am flying through. Is is possible for me to stay in Atlanta and not fly back to Nashville? I would not need another flight to Nashville after my meeting. Also, since I would have a checked bag, would it be possible to only check the bag to Atlanta? Thanks!

Since your flight goes Beijing-Seattle-Atlanta-Nashville, your international arrival city is Seattle. At SEA you will have to go through immigration, reclaim your bags and go through customs, before rechecking your bags to your final destination.

That would be the time to ask/ request the DL Agent at SEA to check your bags only to ATL, and not to BNA.
Guess if you explain why you need to stay an extra day at ATL ...since you recently found out that you have an important meeting in Atlanta the day after I am flying through.

You would still need another flight to Nashville after my meeting. Otherwise be prepared to pay change fees + fare differences.

If it was me, I would go home to BNA, and get a separate round trip flight BNA-ATL-BNA the day after, instead of going through all this, on the way back from an international trip. But that is me!

Flight Connection Question
 

You can only check your bag through to your final destination. They will not short-check it for you unless your layover exceeds a certain length which I believe is 12 hours but I could have that detail wrong. Also, in the event of IROPs, DL is only obliged to get you to your final destination, not necessarily to route you through ATL. If the meeting is that important that you don't want to risk missing it, I suggest you change your itinerary and pay the fare difference and change fee if any.

Since when?

Right - I've been able to get my back checked to an intermediary destnation within a larger itinerary...especially when I've had ~4 hours to leave the airport and meet friends.

That's really a surprise as I've been told it can't be done. Never tried it myself. If that's true, then why in the weekly hidden city ticketing thread do people warn the potential hidden city ticketer not to check a bag?bseveral people have said DL won't short check unless the connect time exceeds a certain length. Well good luck to the OP, but my comment about IROPs stands.

DL won't short-check a bag on a connection as opposed to a stop-over.

OP - Before you do anything, why not price out what the change would be to convert the ATL connection to a stop-over with a flight out the next day. Even with a $200 change fee, if the fare is lower, that might be economical anyway.

My impression of the OP was that it was a connection, not a stop-over. Was I wrong?

I don't know what Delta would do as far as checking bags is concerned, but I think that the main problem is what might happen in the event of missed connections or delayed flights in Seattle. DL could reschedule passengers to fly to Nashville via Detroit or Minneapolis rather than Atlanta, depending on schedules and availability of seats.

+1
That's the issue with hidden-city ticketing. DL does not guarantee that you will go via ATL, only that you will be flown from PEK to BNA. The checked bag also presents an issue, especially if the layover in ATL is short. If the layover is actually a stopover (4+ hours) the OP can have the bag only checked to ATL but if the time in ATL is under 4 hours, then the check-in agent may not allow it. Given how frequent the flights to BNA are from ATL, I would be surprised if the OP has a 4 hour+ layover/stopover.

Another option: simply book a BNA-ATL-BNA flight for shortly after you're scheduled to arrive in BNA. I've asked DL before and if you have another DL itinerary that is then impacted because of a previous DL flight, you're protected (of course, I've only asked a phone agent and phone agents aren't always 100% right so this may require some double checking). But if you're delayed and will miss the BNA-ATL flight after you arrive from PEK-SEA-ATL-BNA, then you should be able to make the case to the agent rebooking you that you now need to be in ATL (show them you have a BNA-ATL booked afterward) and they could rebook you to terminate in ATL. Such an option may come out cheaper than paying a change fee plus fare-difference for changing PEK-SEA-ATL-BNA to PEK-SEA-ATL. Either way, you end up in ATL, either by flying back after you arrive or through IROPS you get rerouted to ATL since that's "where you need to be".

Yes, me too. ^

No. But, what if he switches his connection so that it becomes a stop-over the next day when he now wants to fly xATL?

In that case there surely wouldn't be a problem with bags, but to make this change OP would have to change the itinerary involving a change fee and possible fare difference.

On an international ticket, less than 24 hours is a connection not a stopover; it's 4 hours for domestic.

For normal connections, DL will not shortcheck bags. I think the normal time frame is more than 4 hours, maybe 8, but I don't know for sure.

So I was right... Good to know for future reference.