dangaldana

I've already purchased a ticket to fly with United in the following route: TLS-MUC-IAH-CUU
The layover in MUC is only one hour long but I want to know if it's possible to stay 24h (intention is to make a express visit to the city) and take the same flight and connection to my final destination (CUU) next day.

What are the steps to follow?
Will it be expensive?
Can it be free?

jsloan

Welcome to FlyerTalk!

It depends upon the fare rules for your ticket. Your fare rules should be linked from your receipt on United.com. You’re specifically looking for the text in the “stopovers” section. I took a look at a couple of the least expensive TLS-CUU round-trip fares, and they do not allow stopovers. The more expensive fares allow one stopover, at an extra charge of €300 — but only if that stop is in the Western Hemisphere. A very expensive fare might allow a stopover in Europe; I didn’t look.

For an intercontinental journey, a stopover occurs when you spend more than 24 hours at a transfer point. If there is another flight you can take from MUC to the US that is less than 24 hours before your arrival from TLS, that would not constitute a stopover and therefore could be covered by these discount fares. Note that this might involve a later departure from TLS or an additional stop somewhere.

Otherwise, you can try pricing the ticket starting from MUC and then buying a TLS-MUC ticket separately (or taking the train, but it’s about 1000km so it’s a fairly long train ride).

You will have to pay the change fee for your itinerary, plus any difference in fare that results. If you’re willing to wait to the last minute, and MUC-IAH is operated by UA (not Lufthansa), then you could potentially change within 24 hours of departure for a $75 change fee. This is called a Same-Day Confirmed (SDC) change, and there’s a board thread about it. You might even be able to do it twice and thus create a stopover that would not otherwise have been legal without a big fare difference (but you’d have to pay the $75 twice).

If you have United Gold status or higher, there is no charge for SDC.

Hope this helps.

findark

24h00 exactly counts as a transfer too

(I did that in TYO once)