amarain

I'm trying to book a flight ATL-LED, and all of the options on the way back include an overnight layover in either AMS or CDG. The LED-AMS leg arrives at 7:35 pm, then AMS-ATL leaves the next morning, and this seems like a big waste of time. If I have to stay overnight and pay for a hotel, I'd rather book the AMS-ATL leg for the morning after that so I can spend the day in Amsterdam, but is this possible?

Apologies if this question has been addressed before - I did a search but only found threads about booking award travel.

MSPeconomist

It depends on the fare rules. More expensive fares are likely to allow either free stopovers or stopovers for a nominal additional fee. This is stated in the fare rules.

To book on delta.dumb, do a multicity search. You can then compare the fare and even check how much the same fare class would cost without the upgrade.

amarain

I'm sorry, I'm not sure what you mean by an upgrade.

I looked at booking the flights online doing it as a multi-city booking, and the fare is about $400 more per ticket, which is definitely not worth it to me. It just seems silly to me that it would cost $400 more simply to take the flight spaced 24 hours a part, but then, it's not as though pricing ever makes any sense.

I just didn't know if there was any way to force a longer layover while booking.

CarmenOM

A connection time of up to 24 hours is not considered a stopover on international flights. That is often easy to do going USA to Europe, when flights from the US arrive in AMS or CDG in the morning and you can often find a flight to your destination at an earlier time the following morning, keeping the connection under 24 hours. The schedules don't seem to work as well returning to the US. Can you find an earlier flight LED-AMS?

amarain

Unfortunately, no, that seems to be the only one. There's an LED-CDG flight but it leaves at 4:30 pm and runs into the same problem (the ATL leg is the next morning).

All I really want to do is book it so that instead of LED-AMS on Wednesday night, then AMS-ATL Thursday morning, the AMS-ATL leg is on Friday morning instead. I'm not sure if there's any way to do this, though, short of just plain missing my flight and asking them to book me on the next one (though I suspect that would end up costing me a lot more).

MSPeconomist

Sorry, I said upgrades when I mean stopovers. It's New Year's Day.

MSPeconomist

Depending on your destination, you might be able to pick a later departure from AMS or CDG (within 24 hours of the flight arriving from LED) to give yourself a few more hours. This might require a connection in, for example, DTW or MSP. Check the schedules for the latest flight from AMS or CDG to ATL if that's your ultimate destination. You might have for force the additional connection using multicity but this should not increase the fare if the same fare class is available.

The $400 price difference you're seeing could either be a stopover fee or the cost of a more expensive fare class (that could have additional benefits for you). You might want to experiment with searching by fare class for different "? or higher" choices to see if delta.dumb offers a cheaper way to get the stopover. Also, look for broken fares that can make the total price greater and try using search by fare class to avoid them.

suvayanr

You may also be able to book the LED-AMS on a different ticket and just have your return from AMS. Worth checking easyjet and transavia fares.

beachmouse

I played around with this a bit on delta.dumb and hipmunk. For dates randomly selected for April:

ATL-LED $750
open jaw- ATL-LED and AMS-ATL- $854 and a one way LED-AMS structued to give you two days in AMS could be had on Air Baltic for $109
ATL-LED LED-AMS AMS-ATL multicity routing giving you two days in AMS- $994.

So about $200-$250 extra to swap an overnight in Amsterdam for one where you get to see the city using one sample set of days.

amarain

Thanks so much! I'll check into a few of these ideas.