San Francisco to East Coast-morning or red eye?
 

What do you think is the best? We always take an evening flight to Europe and I don't really have any problem with it, but that is a longer flight. I can't decide if I want to arrive in the morning or fly all day, get home late, but sleep in my own bed. What do you find best?

I've flown SF to east coast many many times and hate the trip.

Overnight flights leave 10 or 11pm and get in around 5am. Too short to call it a night's sleep.

Daytime flights burn the whole day getting home - the worst are those that leave mid day and get back late at night.

For a non-stop, I find I prefer the earliest possible departure from SFO @ 6 or 7am. Gets met into NYC around 4 or 5pm.

For a connecting flight, options are worse since it adds 3-4 hrs to the arrival time regardless of whether I connect in IAD, ORD, PHL, or EWR. That said, for a connecting flight I actually am ok with the longest possible overnight leg, eg SFO to Dulles, then connect to my home airport on the first flight of the day, getting in around 9 or 10am. I'll do that if I have to work on both ends of the continent on successive days & can't afford to burn a day in transit.

It depends on the situation. My last trip to NY I flew the jet blue red eye since it was a short trip and it netted me an entire extra day for sightseeing.

If I had flown a morning flight I would have spent most of my first day in transit. Plus there are no non-stop day-time flights from SMF so the red eye was preferable. (but I sleep OK-ish and jet blue is pretty comfortable)

Other times - I fly during the day when it works for my schedule.

FTP, you are going home to the East Coast, yes? So the goal is to maximize time on the West Coast, perhaps? If so, the red eye makes the most sense to me.

That said, we go to the West Coast so often, and I hate red eyes so much (especially short-ish ones), that I do as J62 describes: take the earliest, shortest set of flights possible so as to arrive home in the evening instead of at night.

Thank you all for your replies. Yes, this is the end of our almost two week trip so don't mind missing the last day (had even considered leaving a day or two earlier). We ended up snagging a cheap flight via a connection in Philly that i can upgrade with miles to business class. This is better for my husband who suffers from Parkinsons. I had searched for a business class trip with miles, but could not find any, so this seals the deal. Looking forward to San Francisco!