For what it is worth to you Fodorites out there, we just had our first experience with a daytime flight from the U.S.A. to London and loved it. Depated Chicago on American at the very civilized hour of 910 a.m., arrived London Heathrow (to an empty Terminal 3) around 1015 p.m., in time to get to the hotel, check in and have a small late dinner before going to bed and waking up the next morning with no sign of jet lag whatsoever. The downside to these daytime flights is that it obligates an extra hotel night but, to us at least, no jet lag was worth every penny of it. We'll do it again on our next trip. I believe these daytime flights to London are available from Boston, New York and D.C., also. Highly recommended.

I'm glad it worked for you.

Another downside for me would be using an additional vacation day. I work until early afternoon on the day I depart, to save the vacation time.

Keith

Well, it's not hard to figure out why AA flies 4 night-time flights ORD-LHR and one day-time. WIth a 9:10a-10:35p schedule, one has to connect from an extremely early flight unless they're originating from ORD; and basically no connection possible after arriving in London.

And Keith already mentioned the lost of a useful vacation day.

I certainly understand the drawback of an extra vacation day and leaving VERY early to catch a connecting flight to ORD but I flew this schedule last February and it was much easier for me to adjust to the time change than when flying the redeye. I basically felt no jet lag on that trip.

I agree with David. I take the day flight when I go to London and it makes the whole trip so much more enjoyable. It may take up a vacation day but it pays off in the quality time I spend in London. Rather than having a few days of jet lag I feel great and I'm ready to have a full day of activities.

Another big fan of the day flight to London (from Boston), then connecting the next day to where I'm going, usually Paris or Amsterdam. When I was in my 20s and 30s it wasn't that tough to recover from that gruesome feeling of landing in Europe when the clock says 7am and your body, having gotten no sleep, says that it's 1am. Now that I'm middle-aged (assuming of course that I'll live to be 112), I prefer a proper night's sleep.

BTW, it can be tricky to get the connection to show up online -- I typically have to call AA directly.

For the sake of completeness there is daytimer from Toronto to London as well. It leaves at 9 AM arriving at 9:15 PM to fairly empty terminal 3 and uncrowded Piccadilly line. I am also a big fan as I hate overnight flight.

We live about 2+ hours from either Boston or JFK, so for a daytime transatlantic flight at 9 we have to leave home well, very early indeed, allowing for checkin time. But sometimes it is a good solution.

Last January we flew to Abuja in Nigeria -- those are overnight flights only, from London. So the simplest way was to stay in Boston overnight, take the daytime flight, do a short layover at Heathrow (where we found the napping section!) then the overnight flight to Abuja. It was tiring, but certainly better than having a 12-hour layover and back-to-back night flights!

Fringe bene was that we could leave our car at our Logan airport hotel, for a very modest charge. We stayed there again on the return trip, which was one r-e-a-l-l-y long day -- then drove home refreshed after a good night's sleep. I used to do whatever it took to save travel $$, but as I get older I'm kinder to myself...