Sarah

Trying in vain to find flights back to the UK that aren't red eyes.

I'm departing from the east coast (NY to be exact) I don't want to be overly picky but red eye flights seriously mess me up. I'm a bad sleeper anyway but it's taken me close to the entire time I've spent in the UK to get the right way round again. Spoiled a couple of trips this way, don't want to do it again.

Also traveling with a 2 year old this time (God help me) and don't want to take her on a red eye in case she screams the entire time the rest of the plane is trying to sleep.

Anyone else not particularly partial to red eye flights?

Any tips on which airlines fly to the UK and offer normal flights?

lansbury

There are two Virgin Atlantic flights that depart from EWR to LHR between 7am and 8am. Anything leaving NYC after 11am would be pushing getting to LHR before it closes for the night time curfew.

MidAtlantic

I believe United have a daytime flight out of Newark to Heathrow, leaves around 9am and arrives around 9pm

rpjs

BA too - I've flown on daytime flights with them back to the UK many times. well worth it.

christmasoompa

Can you not just search on a website like Skyscanner or Expedia? You can specify times then.

Pulaski

I used several recently and they all offered time slot filtering or sorting options, and I noticed a (very) few early flights out of Newark to London, so non-redeye flights certainly exist.

Sarah

They've been turning up nothing but red eye flights for me.

rpjs

Looking at BA's schedules, from JFK to LHR there's BA0180 dep 0715 arr 1855 and BA0178 (my usual) dep 0815 arr 2005. No BA daytime flights from EWR as far as I can see tho.

Pulaski

I have just now, 2 minutes ago, been to expedia.com and searched for EWR-LHR return 6/2/14-6/13/14, and I found four flights leaving at or before 9am ( I suspect they are actually two code-share pairs). The flights are Delta, Lufthansa, Virgin, and United.

tonrob

I only fly daytime to London, and do so quite regularly. Both BOS and JFK have BA departures, and there's Virgin too as already mentioned.

penguinsix

I think Dulles (IAD) has a day time flight, but it is Summer only.

JFK used to have a BA flight that was in the morning. Not sure if still the same. Might also be a 'Summer' thing.

tonrob

They have 2 every morning (mentioned upthread): 0715 and 0815.

markonline1

Heathrow never closes. There isn't a curfew as such, merely restrictions. But you are right, there are no scheduled arrivals after 2330.

Englishmum

Red eye flights from the east coast are probably more profitable for the airlines, especially if passengers need to connect to onward destinations as planes are only making money once they are in the air and not parked up for many hours at a gate.

The last time I took a morning flight (Virgin Atlantic from Newark) it wasn't a good experience; our house is only 10 miles west of EWR but I still had to get up at about 4.30am.... For people coming in from New York city or further afield in New Jersey they would have probably had to get up even earlier to get to the airport.

The time of year was mid-March and the plane was pretty empty; I'd already checked in online and it was obvious that the way the seats were blocked off was because of distribution of weight. So far so good.

However the plane pushed back from the gate....only to go a few yards before the Captain announced that due to a technical problem they needed to return to the gate (passengers to remain in their seats). It turned out that as the plane (an Airbus) had been parked up overnight, a fuel pipe to the engine had frozen

The plane departed 21/2 hours later

The worst thing about it was that quite a few travellers were flying on to other cities eg. Mumbai, Dubai and I was supposed to be connecting onto a Singapore Airlines flight at LHR.....as the Virgin plane arrived at the gate I saw the Singapore Airlines plane I should have been on pushing back at the next gate

Those of us on missed transfer connections (ie. no more flights until the following day) were greeted by two Virgin reps who gave us vouchers to get on the shuttle bus to the Park Inn motel near the airport. We were also given a voucher to make a short overseas phone call. A number of Americans were doing their nut (one guy insisted on having his suitcase returned to him as he 'needed his medication' and after receiving it admitted that he lied). By this time (I think it was about 10.30pm-11pm) the airport was pretty much closing down.

We got to the Park Inn and the only food available was overly heated, congealed slop - and there was hardly anything left. I retreated for a quick drink at the bar with an American woman who was quite distressed at being stuck in London overnight (without English currency) and wanted to 'hang' with me as at least I was a Brit and was familiar with LHR lol! After going to my room some Arabic guy who'd followed me up from the bar tried to get into my room, calling out 'room service' as he knocked on the door....

The best thing about the experience was that I was given an emergency exit seat on the upper deck of the SIA A380 Airbus the next morning, it was fab! My suitcase didn't arrive though for another 24 hours....

I used to like the daytime flights to London (if I was getting off there) as you arrive in the evening and if not going too far from LHR you can go straight to bed....it's not too bad in the Summer but horrible in the Winter. However, if you have to go and pick up a rental car and then have a drive to say the Midlands/Wales/East Anglia/West etc. then it's not so nice.

christmasoompa

And just out of interest, I've just looked on Skyscanner.net and done the same. I set the departure time as before 11am, and 10 flights came up with various airlines like Iberia, Virgin, Delta, BA etc.