I want to book a flight on BA from the US through London on to Europe. On the outbound flight, I'd like to have a stopover in London - that is, a few DAYS before continuing on to Europe, rather than a few hours. (There is already a layover of 3 hours at LHR.)

If one flies on a reward voucher from BA, then such a stopover is free, but I would be paying for the flight. BA's website doesn't reveal any relevant searches on stopover or layover.

Has anyone done this recently? I'd rather do this than book two round trips or a three-city booking.

Once you find a fare that allows a stopover, then it's usually an additional 100 bucks or so. A stopover is anything over 4 hours.

Just to clarify - what do you mean by reward voucher?

In general, when you perform a flight search on ba.com from point A to point B (requiring a change at LHR) the system will identify that a stopover is possible and will ask whether this is something you wish to do. This is all built into the flight search. The final price will reflect the price including the stopover.

Note that because the UK has high departure taxes (that just went up again the other week) it is preferable to have the stopover on your outward journey (as you intend) rather than your return, as in part the taxes are levied based on the distance/value (can't recall which) of the departure segment. In this way the tax is based on a shorter segment (e.g. Heathrow to Frankfurt) rather than a longer one (e.g. Heathrow to Dallas).

Play around with the booking engien on ba.com (making sure you proceed far enough to see the final price including taxes) to get a feel for the cost of the stopover.

I believe BA treats stopovers as being anything 24 hours and over. The difference in cost will be primarily driven by UK departure taxes, which have the potential to increase well beyond the $100 mark and will be driven by where the onwards destination is.

If you are flying "free" on a BA miles voucher, a stopover is free. I don't see anywhere on ba.com to elect for a stopover - plenty of other extras like seat upgrades or hire cars, but not to do a stopover.

There are flights that have "layovers/stopovers" of 30 hours.

I'm confused by your use of the word "voucher". If you are talking about simply redeeming miles to travel (no voucher of any kind involved) then I can walk you through the steps to do a stopover. But I want to make sure you're not talking about something else first. The only voucher I've come across on the redemption side is a 2-for-1 voucher, but I'm not sure that you mean this.

The normal (re cheapest) fares don't allow a stopover. I took a quick peek in my res system at their fare bases and rules and regs. It's the same theory as having to buy a higher priced economy fare in order to upgrade to Business Class with miles. The old the more you want, the more you pay.

Sounds like she's planning an outright redemption, though - just need to clarify what she's using (hence my questioning the "voucher"). Stopovers are fine on straight BA mileage redemptions - will just impact the taxes.

When I think of a voucher I think of an MCO (credit from airline) but I don't think it's that.

Sorry all - I am not redeeming miles. I am paying for the ticket(s).

The only reason I mentioned "free stopover" was that there IS a rule for mileage redemption based tickets.

No free stopovers on paid tickets on ba.com I'm afraid. You have to search for a multi-city itinerary, and then compare with a 'normal' out and back pricing to see how much the stopover is costing.

Yep - it took a week for BA's email support to get back to me with this.

It's cheaper to do two bookings and make sure that they are spaced far enough apart in time to transfer. Or just take the Eurostar, or ferry, or....

Hmmm.... their webshite was down for a significant amount of time a few days ago so I'm sure that's impacted their volumes. Still - I think you've hit upon your viable options there.

Afterthought - I wonder whether they'd link your PNRs for the return journey if both segments were BA...? Might be worth asking.

P.S. BA's US call center is beyond shite, so if you want to ask them this as a general question then call the UK one. They're sweeties.

SB, Give me your dates and proposed itin. and I will price it on my res system.

Point is moot because daughter isn't going - it's just me.

Thanks Cind.