International Flight Question
 

Hello all! This summer of 2017 I will be visiting Germany. I'll be flying out from Nashville, TN, USA (BNA) and will land in Frankfurt, Germany (FRA). My question is, what time should I leave Nashville to get to Frankfurt so that I can spend the day there? Should I sleep on the flight there? Thanks for all your help!

Do you have many choices of flights/ are you going direct to FRA or connecting in another US city to then fly across. Many trans-Atlantic flights land early and do give you most of the day.

I do usually sleep some...walk around a bit after landing, have lunch then a nap. I make sure it is a short nap and head out for the evening and stay up until 10 or so. Many others will say no nap....but it works for me - otherwise I want to bed down too early and wake up in the middle of the night!

Your airline should tell you when you need to check in in Nashville for an international flight. Usually it's 3 hours ahead of time. Your ticket confirmation should also tell you that. Normally, you leave the USA in the evening and arrive in Europe early morning, but there are exceptions to that. You probably don't have a lot of options originating from Nashville, though.

Should you sleep on the plane? The greater question is, CAN you? Of course you should, if you can (a lot of people can't).

I never nap once I arrive overseas. If I do, it messes me up for days. I just take it easy, get as much sunlight as possible, and plan on a gentle first day.

There are no nonstops from BNA to FRA. Practically all flights require you to make two changes en route. If you take a flight combination that gets into Frankfurt kinda early, then your body will say "Hey, in Nashville it's the middle of the night".

All flights go through the night and get to FRA in the morning the next day, because you're catching up on the 7-hour time difference between Nashville and Germany.

So you'd better get ready to take a serious nap on the leg that goes across the pond, from wherever you last connection is. It will be a very short night, and if you drink coffee, watch TV that remains flickering on your brain, you'll be in bad shape the next day when you get to Frankfurt. (Unless, coming from Nashville, you're a musician who is used to keeping crazy hours and sleep patterns?)

Say your flight arrives at 11AM local time. That is 4AM Nashville time. See what I mean?

Avoiding jetlag is an art that can be learned, but you really have to practice. Wriggle your body into a position you can maintain for maybe 20 minutes, rearrange your limbs now and then without forcing yourself to wake up. Take a sip of water now an then, but don't drink so much that you have to get up all the time (Americans tend to overdo the "hydrating"). Keep that little water bottle handy so you don't need to do a whole number to get at it.

If you don't get it right on this trip, learn from it, you'll get the hang of it.

The flight schedule should answer that question for you, as to when the flight leaves and arrives. A lot of flights that I take arrive in Europe in the early morning if they are in Western Europe (like Paris), so you get there around 7 am. But when I went to Poland last summer, due to connections, I didn't arrive in Warsaw until much later, probably noon or so. That can work out well because at that time, by the time you get to your hotel, you can usually check in. When you arrive at 7 am, you usually cannot, so you have to leave your bag and wander around anyway. I prefer to get settled myself, so would rather arrive in later morning to the airport.

If you can sleep, more power to you, of course. I can barely sleep on those flights, I just cannot sleep sitting up, I am not comfortable enough. I dose for a couple hours and that's about it so I am pretty dead the first day, unfortunately.

I never nap the first day, if I do, I am out of sorts for days. It is a challenge, but I have learned the hard way that if I nap after arrival, I am off sync for days and then I can't sleep that night, it's a bad cycle. If I push myself and don't nap, and don't go to bed until at least 10 pm, I sleep until about 7 am the next day and pretty much am right in sync with the time change.

two camps here, who knows which one will work for you. If I could sleep more on the plane, staying up wouldn't be as challenging as it is.

There certainly are one stop routings, with the connection in a wide assortment of North American cities. But you will arrive the next morning. I rarely get more than an hour or two of sleep on a trans Atlantic flight in economy, you may do better. Or not. Everybody reacts differently. I spend 3-4 hours asleep the first afternoon, get up for dinner, go to bed when everyone else does, and am synced the next morning.

Just go to kayak.com or another aggregator to search flights. As others have said, you'll have to connect somewhere else. You'll be able to see when each set of flights arrives FRA.

No reason to check in to your domestic feeder flight 3 hours early. The only extra thing they'll need to do in Nashville is make sure your passports are in order.

Finally, of course you should sleep on the flight over the Atlantic, if you can. It will be a red-eye flight. If you book business class with a lie-flat bed, that will make sleeping a lot easier. If you're in economy, sleeping will be much more difficult. Ask your doctor to prescribe Ambien or another sleeping pill, if you'd like help sleeping.

Taking sleeping pills on a flight is not a particularly good idea. It has been discussed here a number of times. You don't want to be out of things if there is an emergency.

You'll probably have to make at least one stop in North America to catch your flight to Frankfurt. My advice is to find an itinerary that gets you into Frankfurt as late in the morning as possible, say 10:00 to 11:00. As pointed out, that's 3:00 to 4:00 AM in TN.

Everyone has his or her tricks for coping with jet lag. There are some good ones here. Mine is to try to change my schedule a bit before I leave. For Europe, three or four days before departure, I'll go to bed an hour earlier each night. (I'm semi-retired so I can do that, and I'm getting old so falling asleep early isn't a problem.) Even if you're just partially successful you can get a jump on the time change.

And it's next to impossible for me to sleep during the flight these days if I fly in economy. I spend an additional $100 or so and fly comfort/premium economy for the Atlantic leg of the trip.

Basically all east coat fights to europe leave at night and arrive in the early am (from 5/6am to about 10 am). The question is what price deal you can get through Nashville - and, if possible - making only one stop on the way. (Two is a major PIA and increases significantly the chance of delays.)

Have you looked at kayak.com to see flight costs and times?

We fly out of BNA and there are no non-stop flights to Europe from Nashville -- the airport gets its "International" designation by virtue of a couple of flights offered to Toronto and Cancun. We have never flown into Frankfurt but we do fly into either Charles de Gaulle or Zurich a couple of times a year. The flights we take usually leave BNA between 12:50 and 3:30 p.m. with one transfer in Atlanta or Dulles (or Newark or JFK) and arrive between 7:00 and 9:30 a.m. the following morning.

There may be flights which leave later in the afternoon but we have not had occasion to investigate later flights. As others have said, a later arrival will be handier if you are going to a hotel.

I believe that the recommended arrival time for international flights is three hours before scheduled departure time (even though you will only be doing a short domestic flight from Nashville proper), but we usually arrive only about two hours before; we do, however, have Global Entry with accompanying Pre-Check which can cut a few minutes if it is busy. The majority of the time the airport in Nashville is not tremendously crowded but a couple of times we have spent longer going through the security line than we did on the actual flight to Atlanta. Most frequently we are through security within twenty minutes of arrival and can stop by Noshville in Terminal B for a bagel -- but I never want to count on that rapid a transit!

Definitely sleep on the plane if you can; sometimes I can get several hours and sometimes I only doze a bit. We do not take naps on arrival; the time change generally catches up with me about 6:00 in the evening, but then I usually get a second wind and am okay until 10:00 to midnight.

Good luck in planning!

Ms. ImaginaryJazz

I spend an additional $100 or so and fly comfort/premium economy for the Atlantic leg of the trip.>>

I do that, also, I still cannot sleep--it isn't just the leg room (which helps me not feel claustrophobic), I absolutely cannot sleep sitting up. A couple inches recline doesn't cut it for me, that's still sitting up. And then there is nowhere to put your head, etc., it's just completely uncomfortable for me (partly may be because I normally do not sleep on my back, I sleep on my stomach or side a little bit).

I wish I could sleep just by getting a couple more inches leg room, but I can't.

Christina, have you tried resting your head on your arms on the table? Like little kids sleep at school sometimes? Only works for a non bulkhead seat.

Thanks for all the help! I think I got it, try to sleep on the flight, do not nap on arrival, and go to bed late. I think I'll be able to sleep on the flight since I can sleep anywhere, anytime. I am looking forward to my trip!

I normally can sleep on planes, but on a transatlantic flight, you really don't get much time to sleep. By the time they get finished with the meal service, you often only have about four hours before they're waking you up for breakfast.

I prefer to get a flight leaving the US late at night so that I don't arrive too early in the morning, and facing 15 hours awake before I can reasonably pack it in for the night.

Correct me if I'm wrong. In the USA there is no passport control to leave the country. Your airline is responsible for checking your passport is in order when you check in and you might have to show your passport upon boarding the connecting flight to Europe (it would seem connecting in Atlanta might be the best but I don't know the exact flight schedules. Chance are if you connect in Atlanta, you won't leave the security area and have to go through the pain in the rear end that airline screening unfortunately has become.

">... I can sleep anywhere, anytime. I am looking forward to my trip!<"

That's the spirit! (But you may have been bragging - have you tried sleeping while standing up in a hammock? Just kidding).

With that kind of outlook you'll be just fine. And don't forget that the excitement of "being there" when landing overrides many a minor discomfort.

I'm a "sleep anywhere" person, too, but I have never been able to go an entire first day in Europe. The arrival day is always a blur, and my most vivid memories are of airports, train stations and finding my way to the hotel/hostel/friend's house.

You might want to leave that arrival day unscheduled, or have a Plan B in case you don't feel up to doing much. I can usually make it until about 4pm local time, but then I just hit a wall and cannot keep my eyes open, regardless of what I do. Obviously, that's not the moment that you want to be in a busy city, miles away from your hotel/hostel. If it's a city with many pickpockets, that's even more important.

Either way, enjoy your trip! Frankfurt gets a bad rap but I've been there a couple times now and find it enjoyable. It's not Paris or Fussen, but that's OK - it doesn't need to be. It makes a good base for visiting lots of other places.