You're doing it wrong: Why you should skip redeye flights to Europe | Cruising Altitude

If you’re searching for flights to Europe, you’ll probably find one common trend: almost all of them depart later in the day.

“You leave in the late afternoon, evening, and you arrive early in the day,” Bob van der Linden, curator of air transportation at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum, told me. “That’s just common sense and (airlines) trying to adapt to the desires of their customers.”

In van der Linden’s telling, people want to fly to Europe overnight so they can sleep on the plane and hit the ground running when they land in the morning.

I’m sure he’s right, that most people think that’s the way to do it, but I have to say, I think most people are wrong.

I am a daytime flight to Europe evangelist. Allow me to show you the way.

Why most flights to Europe are overnight

According to van der Linden it comes down to two things: profits and passenger preference.

“Airplanes don’t make money unless they’re flying,” he said. With overnight flights to Europe, “the airplane is in London or Paris – wherever you are – in the morning and they’re ready to turn around and send it back to the U.S.”

Daytime flights to Europe arrive at the destination at night, and depending on the airline’s other routes, may have to sit on the ground for hours before turning around for the next flight.

Beyond that, van der Linden said, passengers (wrongly, in my opinion) prefer flying to Europe at night.

“Most of the travelers want to get there, it’s lovely when you get to Europe and the sun’s coming up. If you’re not sound asleep, you’re ready to go,” he said. “You get fed, you can watch a movie and then attempt to sleep, and when you get up, you’re there, and Europe’s awake so you can go about your business.”

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Why I prefer daytime flights to Europe

It really comes down to what van der Linden just said: “attempt to sleep.”

I don’t honestly know anyone who really gets restful sleep on a flight, especially in economy. I sleep pretty well on planes, but I'm hardly ready to seize the day after a redeye.

For me, the main drawback to an overnight flight to Europe is the thing that van der Linden said appeals to others: having a full day on the ground as soon as you land.

If you’ve ever been to Europe, you probably know exactly what I’m talking about, too:

You arrive in a city sometime in the morning, groggy from an overnight flight during which, if you were lucky, you snagged maybe two to four hours of halting sleep.

You could really use a nap and a shower, but check in at your hotel isn’t until 4 p.m., so instead you have to drag yourself through the motions of sightseeing and over-caffeinating until you can finally be horizontal for a bit.

Whenever I start telling people I like day flights to Europe, their first reaction is usually: “but then you’re wasting a day on travel!”

And my response: “sure, but is your first day after a flight that arrives in the morning really ever that fulfilling?”

As a naturally sleepy person, I’d rather prioritize my rest, and that's where daytime flights really make their mark.

Rather than landing in Europe in the morning and zombie-ing myself through a day, I can land in the evening, have a late dinner, stay up for a few hours and go to bed at a normal time. The morning after the flight, I wake up with usually no jet lag and a reset body clock.

Over the holidays, I visited family in England and took an 8 a.m. flight from New York that landed in London at 8 p.m. I had a chance to catch up over drinks with my cousins for a few hours before going to bed and woke up at a normal time the next day, ready to go.

As van der Linden said, passengers still largely prefer evening flights to Europe for some reason, but if your city has daytime departures, I definitely recommend giving it a shot on your next leisure trip.

(I acknowledge here that business travelers have different needs and also often have access to seats that are better for sleeping, so the advice in this column may not apply to those kinds of trips.)

There's also a budget consideration with daytime flights. I know many people who book an extra night in a hotel when they arrive in Europe in the morning so they don’t have to worry about a late check-in time, but a daytime flight builds that first night of lodging into the itinerary.

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Tips for combatting jet lag

Daytime flights come right in line with expert advice I’ve previously gotten on how to combat jet lag.

“On the plane, if you’re going to be arriving in the morning at your destination, as much as you can, you want to rest or sleep on the plane,” Dr. Charlene Gamaldo at the Johns Hopkins Center for Sleep and Wellness and a professor of neurology and vice provost at Johns Hopkins University, once told me. “If you’re going to be arriving and it’s close to dinnertime you actually, probably, want to refrain from eating on the plane if you can and having dinner there and transitioning into sleep.”

As previously mentioned, even the people who are “good” at sleeping on planes don’t really sleep well on planes, so the techniques Gamaldo suggested are just easier to observe with a daytime flight schedule.

Seriously, try it out for yourself and see what I mean.

Zach Wichter is a travel reporter and writes the Cruising Altitude column for USA TODAY. He is based in New York and you can reach him at zwichter@usatoday.com.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Why you should skip redeye flights to Europe | Cruising Altitude