Traveling to London with a 1.5 year old, night or day flight?

[Anonymous]

She’s a pretty good sleeper so I’m leaning towards night flight. Any best time to leave? I’m concerned about jet lag when we’re there.

[Anonymous]

Definitely night flight.

[Anonymous]

If you want a day time flight, you will have to leave from New York or Boston, so go the night before to one of those, or catch a 6 AM flight to connect from the DC area.

The United day time flight from Dulles was ended in 2023.

[Anonymous]

Yeah I was under the impression basically all flights there are night flights and all flights back are day

[Anonymous]

Night flight

[Anonymous]

We did the day flight with our kids years ago. I didn’t realize it was discontinued. It’s a short flight so it’s impossible to get anywhere near enough nighttime sleep. I’d recommend renting your accommodations so they’re available upon arrival for a nap.

[Anonymous]

I LOVED the day time flight. Was really hoping they would bring it back.

[Anonymous]

I would do the day flight. It's too short for a night flight. It's really not much different than going to CA from the East Coast time wise.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I LOVED the day time flight. Was really hoping they would bring it back.

I feel like it reappears on the schedule periodically and then disappears again. I thought it was back at some point this year but can't seem to locate it. Guess its gone again.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Definitely night flight.

+1.

[Anonymous]

I’d do the night flight just for the non stop (assuming you are in DC). Traveling the day before to another city to get the day flight the next morning would be way more stressful than 7 hours overnight.

[Anonymous]

The red eye is torture, but is like 1/2 as much as the day flight.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I LOVED the day time flight. Was really hoping they would bring it back.

I feel like it reappears on the schedule periodically and then disappears again. I thought it was back at some point this year but can't seem to locate it. Guess its gone again.

It was pretty consistent pre -covid, and then was an early covid cut. It came back in 2022 and lasted until October 2023, but hadn't flown since then. United has had issues with not enough long haul planes to meet demand to Europe, so they moved those planes to other more lucrative routes. Day time flights are bad because the plane sits at LHR overnight for around 10 hours before it returns. Very inefficient.

Right now in theory it's on the schedule to resume in October 2025, but anything that far out is a placeholder- they don't finalize those schedules until March. When it does return it will probably just be summer seasonal, so earliest it will probably actually fly again will be April 2026. Won't know for sure until October 2925 when summer 2026 schedules are finalized.

[Anonymous]

I thought the day flight was discontinued? I loved it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:We did the day flight with our kids years ago. I didn’t realize it was discontinued. It’s a short flight so it’s impossible to get anywhere near enough nighttime sleep. I’d recommend renting your accommodations so they’re available upon arrival for a nap.

Nap at 8pm? You land and go to bed with the day flight.

With a toddler? Night flight hands down. Otherwise you have a kid that’s possibly up all night because they napped all day.