<p>A friend at one of my D2012’s top-choice schools back East has invited my D to visit in October. </p>
<p>My D can either fly the nonstop red-eye Thursday night and arrive very early on Friday morning. That way, she’d only miss one day of school, but she would likely be very tired for Friday activities. </p>
<p>Alternatively, D can leave school at lunchtime on Thursday, fly with 2 layovers, and arrive just after midnight. But she is concerned about missing 2 days’ of afternoon classes.</p>
<p>Either way, she’d be returning on Sunday.</p>
<p>The cost difference isn’t significant. She won’t be doing a formal interview (the school doesn’t offer them), so I’m not concerned about her being somewhat tired-and-rumpled. On the other hand, I don’t want her to be too tired to enjoy and get value from her visit.</p>
<p>To me, 2 layovers & arriving after midnight are negatives that outweigh taking the red-eye. I think I could sleep on the plane, and would just maybe bring things that could help with that, such as a comfortable pillow, maybe ear plugs, loose clothes, and so on (drowsiness-inducing allergy medicine?). So there’s one opinion for you!</p>
<p>She would just be missing afternoon classes, so…three periods? If I were her, I probably wouldn’t have paid any attention to those classes anyway; I would be too excited waiting to get out of class and go to the college visit.</p>
<p>However, having said that, two layovers and traveling during the day means that she isn’t going to be able to sleep that well on the plane. Might as well just go the whole hog: Have her skip school on Thursday and sleep in for an extra couple of hours. When she looks back on the process even a month after the visit, the four or five class periods she missed wouldn’t have been memorable. The experience will be.</p>
<p>2 layovers usually means 3 to 4 hours of extra travel time and more risk of something going wrong (missed connection due to delayed flight, lost checked baggage, etc.). Arriving after midnight does not help either.</p>
<p>Even if there were no other scheduling constraints like amount of class time missed, I would choose the non-stop redeye.</p>
<p>I would do the red eye. Her friend would have classes on Fri anyway. Your daughter could sleep in the morning when she gets there, wake up in the afternoon when her friend gets back from classes. She would be good to go for Fri night partying.</p>
<p>Nonstop Redeye vs. a oneway flight with two layovers? I think the flights with layovers would be more exhausting. How about the redeye a day early and miss two whole days of classes?</p>
<p>Layovers are of the devil. Avoid them. Can she sleep on planes? (I have that gift – I fall asleep during takeoff and wake up just before landing.). If so, the redeye will be far better.</p>
<p>Even though I can’t sleep a wink on planes, I’d still take the red eye. Two layovers is just asking for trouble. She’s young she can manage on little sleep. Make sure benadryl makes her sleepy if you go that route. I have an idiosyncratic reaction and it makes me feel wired and crazed.</p>
<p>Nonstop is definitely better but both of these options are less than ideal. I would take another look for more choices. Maybe earlier on Thursday? Missing school is a non-issue.</p>
<p>To follow up- I wish I had pg’s gift of falling asleep on a plane, but I rarely get more than a few winks, if my head bobs I wake up instantly. That said, my DH did a cross country commute for several months and flew red eyes all the time. They are not fun IMO, but doable. He’s a lot older than a HS kid so has less stamina, but still did fine. Unless she is willing to miss the whole day of school (no big deal IMO) she wont likely find a mid afternoon flight as it would arrive past midnight as the airports dont take flight arrivals in the wee hours of the morning, so there will be a gap in departure times to accommodate for this. Most flights going west to east either leave in the morning, up to about 1 pm, or at 6:30pm (the red eye). If she gets a window seat maybe she can get some shut eye.</p>
<p>Thanks for all the replies! A little more info: </p>
<p>D is the sort of kid who frets about missing class. </p>
<p>She generally has a hard time sleeping on planes.</p>
<p>She travels light, and will go carry-on, so no risk of lost luggage.</p>
<p>She is a seasoned traveler, so the connections don’t particularly faze her – as long as the airline doesn’t mess up!</p>
<p>The multi-flight hopper is Southwest Airlines. The direct flight is Jet Blue.</p>
<p>The friend won’t mind fetching D from the airport if she arrives midnight-ish. However, we couldn’t ask her to do so at ~5am. So D would have to figure out public transit, and then find her friend’s dorm – all ~1hr before sunrise! It looks like MTBA starts at 5am, so if she did that, she would be on one of the first runs of the day.</p>
<p>I would give D money for cab fare, if that would be safer or easier for her.</p>
<p>Sounds like most posters are suggesting the nonstop but you are leaning, based on the last post, to take the connections. Are the prices equal?<br>
Personally, I’d think one connection might be reasonable, but 2 is just a serious PITA. And why risk one missed connection that could screw up the whole weekend and purpose of the trip? </p>
<p>And if she doesnt want to miss classes, take the direct. She can also do her HW on the plane. Or watch the movie they’ll have on the cross country flight. With Jet blue she should have her own personal tv screen.</p>
<p>It sounds like you go toward the other alternative. But if not, the above tells me there is value in her missing class. You know, move into your discomfort zone. There is tremendous value in learning to miss class. It happens for musicians, athletes, debaters. Later on, it happens due to job interviews, sickness, a chance to present a paper at a conference (see other thread). Later on, due to being a parent or caregiver. Random examples, but such is life, you learn to juggle. It isn’t the end of the world and she will figure out a way to make up for it, and possibly realize the anxiety isn’t worth it.</p>
<p>I live and CA but grew up in Massachusetts. We go back to visit a few times a year and now my daughter is going to college back there. I always travel via the red eye flights going eastward. I return on various schedules.</p>
<p>You get some “sleep” on the plane. Depends on how much noise, etc., the people around you make, how you fit into your seat (leg room is always an issue for me), and other factors. However, whatever “sleep” you get isn’t real restfull. I can go until about noon, east coast time, and then I crash. I’ll sleep for a couple of hours, get up still a little tired. I find that by the time my east coast friends are ready for bed, so am I (for a real night’s sleep). I find that by doing it this way I adjust to the time zone change much quicker.</p>
<p>If you were to take the day flight with all those stops, you’d waste a lot of time. You would also be arriving at midnight and it would feel like 9pm to you, which it really is. You’d be awake for a while (taking time to exit the airport and arrive at your destination) and you’d want to sleep in on Friday. I would do it this way on some business trips to the southeast because the rest of the travel group thought this was the best away to do it. A day or two of this and I’d need toothpicks in my eyes to keep them open. Never would adjust to the time zone change.</p>
<p>Either way, she is not going to be a fan of the airlines after this trip IMHO. Too much seat time and not enough ground time for this trip. I might consider leaving wednesday night even though it means missing two days of school. Much more meaningful trip being able to see the campus on Friday when you can be really awake.</p>
<p>Typically, eastbound flights across the US tend to depart the west coast at either early morning (lose the whole day), midday (lose most of the day since you’ll have to have a few hours lead time in the morning to get to the airport), or late evening (redeye). The time zone change means that a 5-6 hour flight means that you arrive “8-9 hours later” at your destination (of course, the return flight means that you arrive “2-3 hours later”).</p>
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<p>Yes, there are non-stop non-redeye flights, but many of them are on airlines with worse customer service (for those who do not have elite status on the airline) than Southwest or Jet Blue. See [KAYAK</a> - Cheap Flights, Hotels, Airline Tickets, Cheap Tickets, Cheap Travel Deals - Compare Hundreds of Travel Sites At Once](<a href=“http://www.kayak.com%5DKAYAK”>http://www.kayak.com) for flight searches.</p>
<p>Also, in airline and travel agent terminology, “direct” does not mean “non-stop”. “Direct” simply means that the same flight number is used on all segments of the flight, but there may be stops. On Southwest and Jet Blue, you stay on the same plane, but on some other airlines, there can be a plane change (basically a connection, with all of the possibilities of missing it due to flight delay, or checked baggage being lost while being transferred). Always use “non-stop” when you really mean non-stop.</p>
<p>IMO, Jetblue’s economy seats are better than other carriers’, and a direct flight is much better than a flight with 2 layovers. She can have breakfast at the airport upon her arrival, freshen up and then take the T. By the time she is done with all of that, it will be close to 7 am than 5 am (been there, done that - everything takes longer than you think it would). Boston is a pretty safe city as far as large cities go, and the T is very popular commuting option, so she will not be unsafe. Cabs are great, but they are expensive.</p>
<p>One other thing about the midnight arrival. If the plane is late, her friend will still be stuck picking her up. The T starts to shut down around 12:30am weekdays and is pretty much all done by 1:00am.</p>
<p>I live on the west coast and go to school in the southeast and almost always take redeye flights as I have limited vacation time and there are no shuttles to my school at the late hours when most daytime flights arrive. If she can get even one hour of sleep during the flight and takes a quick nap during the early evening, she’ll be fine.</p>
- everything takes longer than you think it would). Boston is a pretty safe city as far as large cities go, and the T is very popular commuting option, so she will not be unsafe. Cabs are great, but they are expensive.</p>