I am going to EBB in east africa (from IAD or vicinity) in late spring/early summer and since the fare is so pricey I've decided that I should take advantage of the connections (typically London, Brussels, Amsterdam, Rome/Addis Ababa (Ethopian), Dubai (Emirates, etc) and plan a long layover.

.....however I've had poor luck. It seems whenever I try to do a multi destination search on the airline sites or orbitz I get no flight errors (even if I match the times of confirmed flights) or for orbitz I'll sometimes get even more odd iteniaries. I really just want to go the same route that most of the flights there take but simply add a 3-5 day layover in one of the intermediary cities.

I don't even care which one it is really - Addis would be good, I've recently looked into EgyptAir via Cairo and Addis (found this on the Star Alliance search..)...Brussels air has a bargain fair to EBB so that may work but I'd rather do Cairo, Addis or some other European city. I'm not opposed to going via Asia either....though I'm not sure about cost there.

Does anyone know of any tools that would allow me to arrange such a layover? I'm thinking of simply calling an airline and explaining this to a person but I figure the online prices are probably cheaper. I could also try to find a discount travel agent I suppose. I'm a student if this matters at all (and I did try the STA world tool, would have been perfect if it had the routes I was looking for)

if you are doing a round trip, perhaps 2 tickets.....1, iah to layover-iah.....2 layover-ebb-layover...this is called end on end or nested tickets....

plus, you might get lower fares....

good luck....

Thanks - this might be the working strategy. Usually the possibility of a delayed flight makes this option unappealing but with the long layover this won't really be an issue. Thanks for the insight, I'll have to do some searching now. I may even take two different routes if one way prices aren't though the roof.