Best flight layover schedule for preschoolers?

[Anonymous]

Anyone have any advice about the best way to break up a long flight when traveling with 3 1/2 year olds? We have a choice of two flights to the West Coast. Both are about 7 1/2 hours of travel time, including one one-hour layover/flight change. One of them has the plane change after two hours and the other has the plane change after four hours. Is it better to have the short flight first, then give them a chance to stretch their legs in the airport and hope they'll fall asleep on the long second flight? Or better to have the long flight first on the theory that they might be more cooperative at the beginning and then if they're cranky for the second flight it's not as long? Or does it not matter? Any veteran travelers out there want to weigh in one way or the other?

[Anonymous]

What time of the day are you talking about?

[Anonymous]

Early afternoon -- leave after lunch, arrive early evening West Cost time.

[Anonymous]

I would not fo this to a child. We travel to nice places, but only direct. My dc is 6. If we van't get there direct either cross country or outside the US we don't go.

[Anonymous]

PP again. Headed to LA Monday. If you buy ahead you can fly direct on jetblue, virgin america, united and probsbly others for a reasonable price

[Anonymous]

Either is fine, just factor In the natural naptime when scheduling the layover. Last thing you want is a toddler who has just fallen asleep because its past his normal naptime and you now have to wake him up cranky for a layover and napping for the day is shot.

[Anonymous]

We often fly through Dallas and grab lunch in the terminal before connecting to the flight out west.

[Anonymous]

Fly direct, do not do lay over. We have flown DC to LAX several times, and always manage to get through our direct flights fine. My co-worker did layover in Denver and said it was just awful - too many transitions for kids to handle.

[Anonymous]

I doubt OP is going to LA, there are too many direct flights available. Must be a secondary location like Sacramento or Eugene, OR.

[Anonymous]

OP here -- direct flights aren't impossible, but they have significantly worse schedules (early mornings, overnight flights), fewer options, and are a lot more expensive, which matters when you're buying four tickets. We've flown both direct and connecting with our kids, and find it to have tradeoffs -- on the one hand, at the connecting city you have to get everyone through the airport and onto a new plane, and you might wake them up. On the other hand, they're 3, not 8 months old, so they're not going to sleep the whole time no matter what, and they really hate being confined to their seats (and the airlines mostly won't let them run around in the aisles anymore), so the connecting stop is often a good chance to let them run around a little, especially since so many airports have play areas now. We thought of flying direct as being more something we do for ourselves, because getting the kids and the stuff to the connecting flight is stressful for us, and the connection makes for a longer day.

22:45, thanks for the validation -- I was kind of thinking the most important thing was protecting the nap, too. They normally nap after lunch, so I had been leaning toward the longer flight first on the theory that they might fight sleep when we first get on the plane, and that we could get dinner at the layover.

[Anonymous]

Seriously, pay for nonstop and book cheaper hotels via Hotwire. It's like $400 more but worth it. Getting up at dawn and flying on Virgin is the way to go. Little kids are always up at dawn anyway. Definitely go Virgin if you can. Worth it alone for the WiFi, TV, Movies, in flight food ordering.

[Anonymous]

I say do the longer flight, with the layover. That always worked for us.

My kids were always unpredictable on flights. Flying during nap time didn't always equate to sleeping during the flight. Same with overnight flights.

[Anonymous]

Fly direct. With airlines being delayed so often, scheduling nap time around flights could be a disaster.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I say do the longer flight, with the layover. That always worked for us.

My kids were always unpredictable on flights. Flying during nap time didn't always equate to sleeping during the flight. Same with overnight flights.

Agreed! We're going on 8 years of annual flights overseas with 1-3 kids respectively. The first three years of traveling with them were always unpredictable, so it really did not matter much whether we had the perfect schedule or a less ideal schedule. The last flight with all 3 was via Iceland Air, and the layover 5.5 hours into the flight was perfect. The baby, then 13 months old, did not nap on the first leg but slept during the entire 2nd leg and the car ride. No major jet lag issues. The first 2 kids would sometimes sleep on the nonstop flights, sometimes not. Many times they fell asleep during the last hour of the flight, which was quite unpleasant. But we survived. I wouldn't pay a significant amount extra to fly non-stop only to preserve baby's nap, they can get quite overstimulated during the flight anyway and it may become a moot point.

[Anonymous]

Personally for us we don't leave really early because trying to get the kids to the airport on the early flights west is too stressful. We pick a midday flight (no layover whenever possible). When kids were younger they would fall asleep on take off so if there was a stop we preferred the first leg to be the longest one flying west. Coming home if you are there long enough to adapt to the time change we leave mid day, and arrive at night east coast time - again my kids always feel asleep on take off so if you had a short flight on the first leg you had a LOOOONG flight home - our kids wouldn't fall asleep again on the next leg.