My flight to Texas tomorrow leaves ungodly early, requiring me to leave for the airport around 6:30 or so. That’s earlier than I like to be up, but it’s a bit late by my father’s standards– he always books flights that leave at 7am or thereabouts. This seems like a good topic for a poll:
This is an ideal-world situation, where you have your choice of flights leaving at any time of day, so don’t leave comments complaining about the lack of “whenever the airlines say I can go.”
The first choice was closest, but most trips I’ve taken that involve any plane changes have ended up taking all day to finish, so it’s more like “leave ungodly early so that I can get to my destination before nightfall”. And, aside from flying from here to Minneapolis, *all* of our trips end up involving a plane change.
Leaving early is a problem because of the ridiculous amount of time we have to allow for check-in and security theater. So scheduling a flight early in the morning means leaving home in the middle of the night.
For me the most important thing is to arrive in the daytime so that I don’t have to find the hotel and go scrounging for food in an unfamiliar place in the dark (or more likely so that I’ll have a few hours to work on my talk in the hotel before bed). I prefer to leave in the afternoon, but if it has to be early morning in order to arrive at a reasonable time then I will just deal with waking up early (or more likely, not going to sleep in the first place).
The second choice was closest to my preference, but it also depends somewhat on how many time zones I’m crossing. I prefer a late afternoon/early evening arrival if I can get it, since that gives the best chance of minimizing jet lag problems (this has worked well for all of the Asia trips I’ve done). But if you are flying from the west coast to a second-tier east coast airport in winter and want to arrive in daylight as Matt #3 does, often your only viable option is the red-eye (the 7 AM departure with connection gets you in after 5 PM; this time of year sunset hereabouts is around 4:30). I find morning arrivals hardest in terms of jet lag issues (that includes early morning westbound flights).
What time of day will allow me to sit in front and drive? When that time of day arrives, then I’ll fly…
It used to be a joke to mimic the nazi cops and ask “Your papers, Please!” Nowadays the cops omit the “please” part.
It kind of depends where I’m going and why. I’m in Toronto, so if I’m crossing the Atlantic, overnight is good, leaving in the early evening so you don’t lose too much of the following day. (OK, you’re a bit dead the next day, but if you can stay up long enough you get a jump on overcoming jet lag.) If I’m going west to Pacific or Mountain time, I kind of prefer morning. Basically if I’m going somewhere for fun, the answer is “whenever means I can arrive in the morning, local time.” (Incidentally, travelling home from both those options kind of sucks for some reason — not sure if it’s the time change or just the end of the holiday.)
If I’m travelling on business, which thank goodness I don’t do much of in my present job, I prefer to get in to town in the afternoon/early evening so I can find my hotel, check in, and get sorted.
I also cannot deal with early morning flights — arriving at the airport at 6 a.m. for a flight to Mexico a few years ago was really painful. A couple of roving Starbucks carts in the check-in hall would have made my life so much better, but oh no.
How’s that for an unnecessarily complicated answer?
I chose the second one since the first one usually involves getting up at 4 a.m. (This is what happens when you live 2 hours from a major aiport.) But I try to avoid the last flight of the day, because being on that one means a bigger chance of getting stranded overnight somewhere.
I chose leaving in the morning but I would also like to add that I always travel Thursday MORNING to Monday EVENING (obviously when I am traveling for pleasure and have no schedule), I will always avoid the expensive and busy Friday and Sunday traveling days. Also, there is nothing I hate more than getting into my destination city late at night when traveling is more restricted.
You forgot the most important option.
Early in the morning so that after the usual delays, missed connections, canceled flights, and rescheduling I still should arrive no more then a day or two late.
Fly early, fly often, and fly direct (says the guy who lives seven minutes from IAD, where you can get a direct flight to damn near anywhere).
Leaving early enough (mid-morning, but even mid-afternoon might be OK) that there are several later connections that will still get me to my destination.
All time most memorable trip:
Flight scheduled for about 10 am, but got to the airport in time to switch to the 8:30 am flight, which actually left at 10:30 and made it to my destination at about 8:30 pm (based on the originating time zone). Can you guess that ice and snow and O’Hare were involved?