Modifying online flights to include stopovers

Question

I'm trying to get a visa for Canada, but that's beside the point. While I wait, I play with flights online, looking at prices. I found that occasionally there's this weird multi-stop flight that shows up from Auckland, New Zealand to Nadi, Fiji, to Christmas Island, Kiribati, to Honolulu, USA, to Vancouver, Canada!

Now, these only have stopovers of like 1-3 hours, so it's for a refuel or to drop off passengers. Certainly not enough time to get off.

However, if it were possible, I'd like to change the flight to include stopovers of a day to a week - I'm not fussed - I'm flexible, but I'd love to spend even a day in some of these places.

Most online booking sites don't seem to include stopover functionality, however. Kayak allows you to display only flights with a certain length stopover, but this is in the realm of hours, merely to let you configure it not to strand you in Manila or LAX for too long.

Is there a way to search online flights to configure stopovers of days in length, or do you have to book separate flights?

Answer 1

ITA's Matrix can do this, and pretty much anything else you can imagine:

http://matrix.itasoftware.com/

Especially when you find out about all the undocumented options:

http://flyerguide.com/Matrix_by_ITA_Software

Two major caveats:

1. You can't actually book tickets with Matrix, but it can give you an exact description of the fare rules used for the construction that you can bring to a travel agent.

2. Many cheap fares explicitly exclude stopovers, so your itinerary may cost a lot more if you add some. So start with finding the stopover-less fare in Round-trip/One-way and read the small print of the fare conditions. If stopovers are allowed, then try to reconstruct the itinerary with stopovers added in using the Multi-city search.

Answer 2

You can specify multi-city routes on booking sites such as Kayak and then those typically get booked as one-way legs (and thus presumably costlier) rather than an extended stopover.

What I would suggest is to using Kayak (or your favourite flight search engine), look up the airlines that have a stopover. Then go over directly to the airline's website and go through the booking process until it shows you the fare rules. Read the fare rules for a section on stopovers: I've done this previously and found that on certain routes airlines offer free or at-additional-cost stopovers, only at specific airports though. I haven't excercised this option but presumably you'll need to call up the airline to do so because I haven't seen airline booking systems being able to accommodate this in their online booking process.

If that doesn't work, look at whether RTW tickets will be cost-effective for you.

Answer 3

Try harveyworld.co.nz Not bought from them, but looks like you can specify the length of a stopover.