Okay, so this is a domestic travel question, but the people on this forum are so travel savvy and I haven’t been able to find an answer anywhere else! Trying to watch fares for domestic flights for late May. Only want to book directly through an airline, not a ticket broker. Because of the possibility one of us might need to come home early for a pet emergency, we.need to leave from/return to a local airport, most likely Syracuse, entailing a layover with final destination San Francisco. In the past, I could get on an airline website and select the legs and layover I wanted. For some reason airlines (specifically United) are no longer giving me that option. Only showing me a handful of options, all flights with a 49 or 55 or 1:05 minute layover in Chicago. However, when I search just Chicago to SF there are 10+ nonstop flights on my travel dates. Including several options giving me a 2 or 3 hour layover in Chicago. I’d much rather have 2+ hours between flights than have to worry about delays and racing through OHare. But I can’t even see any options for this if I search Syracuse to SFO. Ideally I’d like to locate a couple do-able options (preferably on United or Delta but would fly on other airlines) and then watch that/those itineraries for number of weeks and purchase when I see a decent fare. But since I can’t even bring up itineraries with a longer layover, there’s no way I can monitor them!
I know one work around is purchasing multi-city tickets (trip one Syr to Chicago; trip 2 Chicago to SF; trip 3 sf to Chicago; trip 4 Chicago to Syracuse), but would prefer not to do so because it’s more complicated and seems more expensive. Anyone figured out a way to see more flights online?
Thanks!