I fly occasionally between the East and West coast for work (booking my own flights and being reimbursed later), and usually take direct flights. I haven't been to Las Vegas in a long time so I was thinking about stopping off en route on a future trip for some poker. If I was not getting reimbursed, I would just book a three flight itinerary e.g. NY-Las Vegas, then Las Vegas-SF, then SF-NY, but to squeeze this into a reimbursable business trip the itinerary would need to not have an overnight stop in Vegas when purchased e.g NY-Las Vegas-SF, SF-NY (i.e. a short stop on the outward trip to change planes in Las Vegas).

Any tips on cheaply extending the layover in Las Vegas to one night or more? Right now, I'm thinking I could just no-show for the second leg of the outward flight and just pay by myself for a short onward flight to SF the following day as a separate itinerary. Maybe someone here has a better solution?

it really depends who your flying with. ive missed tons of flights in the past year, and alaskan airlines will always put you on standby on a day that i wanted to leave. so for example, i miss my flight on friday, i tell them iwant to fly standby on monday, i have 2 extra days. but continental airlines on the other hand have ****ed me pretty hard. they booked the ticket on the wrong day and blamed me. i reluctantly bought the very next flight out of vegas with continental because i had to, and still regret it till this day.

If you "no show" for a leg of your itinery, some airlines will cancel the rest of your itinery - including the flight home.

The best place to go to for specifics would be a FF forum (i.e. fliertalk.com), because some one there will surely have the answers you need.

Seems like the simplest and safest way to go would be to book RT NY/SF with the return trip being 4 days after your arrival rather than three. Then just book a RT flight from SF to LV.

Or just talk to your boss or whoever handles the reimbursements. (Tell them you want to stop by Vegas on the way back to pick them up a present but you don't want to be rushed. ) I'm sure they have some leeway.

-------------Kitty

America Worst, now Useless Air, used to allow an overnight layover for 50 bucks or something like that. However, it's not worth putting up with their terrible service for a night in Vegas. You might check Delta, they used to quote overnight flights because their west coast schedule was so crappy and full of holes.