What it looks like
The night the example plan spends in the air
from the example plan- Dallas → London, on the example plan
- $498 per person, leaves 18:30, lands 10:16
- The trip's first night in transit, into the city at 11:46
- −$50 per person
- What the plan says it collected
- 1 overnight leg ≈ $50 per person
- Badge on the leg
- overnight · saves a hotel night
One red-eye, into the city before noon with the day ahead of it, so the whole of a hotel night, and the plan prints what it collected rather than the rate it collected it at. When a leg is worth less than a whole night the chip says how much and why: it reached the city before the day started, or it is not the trip's first night in transit. Raise the nightly rate if you stay somewhere expensive and more overnights win; set it to zero and none do.
When it does not work
- A night in a coach seat is not a night in a bed. If you cannot sleep sitting up, the $50 is not real money to you.
- You arrive early, tired, and usually before check-in, so you may pay for the previous night anyway just to have a room at 8am.
- Overnight flights count as departing on their date, at day granularity, which can shift a night on paper against how it feels.
- An overnight gap between two separate tickets is not a saved hotel night. It is a gap you have to survive, and it is badged as risk, not as a saving.
Risk
Low risk
The only thing you are gambling is a night's sleep.