Originally Posted by
stevenshev
People on this board tend to prefer the daylight flights --- they have way too much free time on their hands.
I don't see a single possible pro to the morning flights.
You lose an entire day in the US.
You arrive in London at night, having just rested on the way over, get to your hotel at 11, and it's 6pm on the East Coast and you've just rested (if not slept). You're not tired, and end up not going to bed until 2/3am anyway, meaining you won't have a full night's rest before your morning meetings regardless.
On the night flight, yes, you're a bit tired, but you haven't lost any time, and by the time 10 pm comes around, you're exhausted, and get a full night's rest before the next day's meetings.
For me it boils down to my inability to imagine unnecessarily spending an entire day on a plane. What a waste of time that could be spent at home or in the office.
It all depends on whether you can sleep on the flight or not. For me, the daytime flight is better because I usually can't get quality sleep on a flight regardless of what cabin I am in (the only exception thus far has been BA's first class suites on SFO-LHR-BKK and return). Taking a night flight means I arrive in London needing to sleep no later than noon. I then miss the entire day sleeping in London and suffer from terrible jet lag for days trying to get back on schedule. Taking the redeye from SFO-IAD (or JFK when on AA) and then the daylight LHR flight allows me to do whatever I want on the plane (including napping) knowing that I will arrive in LHR exhausted at an appropriate sleep time. My body is then fully adjusted when I wake up the next morning.