Taking a Red Eye for the First Time

[Memorymakerfor4]

Where is your final destination? Is it possible to get a direct flight? Will you be in a wide-body jet or a narrow-body?

The problem with the redeye to Los Angeles is that it's not nearly long enough to sleep meaningful hours. It's only a 5:30 flight gate-to-gate, and less than 5 hours in the air. Take out 30 minutes for the takeoff climb and 30 minutes for the landing descent, now you're down to 4 hours. For at least an hour of that time, the lights will be on and the flight attendants will be clunking around with the service carts.

At best, you're giving yourself 3 hours.

We've done HNL-BOS 4 times, HNL-JFK once, and HNL-LAX-BOS once. The connecting flight was horrible and we'll never do it again. It's counter-intuitive but we think it's much more comfortable to be on the plane for 10 hours straight than for 5 hours twice.

LAX is a little more than midway for us. Our local airport ended direct flights with Hawaiian last year and they were the only airline offering that so now every flight means at least one stop. Also, I chose a CA stop this year because last time we went to HI my son with special needs struggled with a further inland stop. He did ok for about 5 hours, but that last hour was ROUGH and until I know he can handle these long flights better, we really need that stop to get up and let him move around. Definitely not an ideal situation, but worth it to get to go to Aulani!

 

[GoingSince1990]

Don’t worry about “I really need to sleep” because worrying about it can stop it happening. Benadryl for the kids can work wonders (check with their doctor first, of course).