Can I change this absurd layover?

Q We have booked to see our daughter and family in Ohio. The flights, with Delta, are from Leeds Bradford to Amsterdam, to Boston and onwards to Cincinnati, and back the same way.

An email has just arrived saying there is a flight change, with us having to spend 24 hours in Boston on the way back. The flights were a reasonable price but the hotel costs will negate this. We would much appreciate your advice.

Pat F

A Your itinerary has been altered to give you an absurdly protracted journey. I imagine you would be happy to stay an extra day in Ohio with your family, but instead an unwanted overnight stay in a different location has been presented to you as a fait accompli.

Since you have booked transatlantic and domestic US flights on Delta, a non-EU airline, the European air passengers’ rights rules do not apply for the journey back from the US. So you have no automatic legal right to expect a more suitable replacement itinerary.

To complicate things, you have booked with a Dutch online travel agent. Had you bought it from a human travel agent based in the UK, you could immediately respond with a demand that they find a more sensible solution – which might, for example, involve flying back via New York or Atlanta rather than Boston.

But the agent you used seems most unwilling to negotiate on your behalf, saying: “The airline has amended your flight schedule. Unfortunately we have no influence on this. The airline does not allow us to offer you an alternative free of charge.”

You could contact the airline directly, but I am afraid you will simply be referred back to the agent, with whom you have the contract.

If you chose the Dutch travel agent through a fare-comparison website, then get in touch with that intermediary’s customer service department and express your unhappiness about this dismal situation. Alternatively, you could contact the agent again and say you will put the credit card charge into dispute with your card issuer unless a reasonable solution is found. But I am not fully confident that either approach will work.

Every day our travel correspondent Simon Calder tackles a reader’s question. Just email yours to s@hols.tv or tweet @simoncalder