Best time to fly to LAX with 2 yo?

[Anonymous]

Going to California with my toddler, trying to figure out how best to time flights. Options are morning flight out (of DCA which is closer to home) and afternoon flight back or evening flights. Leaning toward evening flights hoping that he'll just sleep the whole way. We haven't traveled in over a year, but when we flew previously he always slept most of the way regardless of the time. Any advice?

[Anonymous]

When we had the same issue, we chose to do daylight flights because we figured if she didn't sleep, it would be a nightmare (for us and others), but ours doesn't reliably sleep, so YMMV.

[Anonymous]

we always do first flight out in the morning. Kids are fresher, more likely to be in a good mood. My little ones would be too excited about being on a plane to sleep at night. BUT, I have a lot of friends who swear by the night flight.

[Anonymous]

We do this flight several times a year. Best time to fly out there in my opinion is the one around 6-7pm. Get on the plane, have some dinner (that you brought), watch a little dvd and then go to sleep. You arrive when it's essentially the middle of the night ET for the little one and more than likely they'll be woken up from traveling through the airport, baggage, getting into the car, etc. When you do put them back to sleep again when you finally get where you're going, they will likely sleep in a little later (we're still talking ET here, even though you'll be on PT by then) than they normally do, and thus not waking up SO ridiculously early in the morning CA time, because they were up for a portion of the night.

On the flight back, we like to leave around 11am or so. Same drill - have lunch (that you brought), watch a little dvd, then naptime. By the time they wake up, it's almost time to land and you just need a few more activities to entertain them. You arrive back here around 7pm or so and while they'll probably go to bed later than they normally would after getting baggage and driving home, they're on CA time at that point, so it's not "really" that late.

Do they do direct flights to CA out of DCA? I didn't think they did. Highly discourage against taking a flight with any stopovers.

[Anonymous]

OP here. Thanks everyone.

To answer the last PP's question, there is now one direct flight out of DCA on Alaska in the morning.