Right now, if you fly Qantas to Los Angeles from Sydney or Melbourne, you’re stuck with leaving relatively early in the Australian day and arriving early in the US morning. From early 2015, you’ll also have the option of an early evening flight from Australia. That might prove less tiring, depending how easily you can sleep on a plane.
Right now, Qantas offers two services a day from Sydney to Los Angeles: QF107 (on a 747 which continues to New York) leaving at 1135 and arriving at 0630 the same day, and QF11 (on an A380), leaving at 1500 and arriving at 0945 the same day. From Melbourne, there’s one: QF93 (on an A380), leaving at 1155 and arriving at 0710. Parallel services leave Los Angeles late in the evening and arrive two days later in the morning.
From 21 January 2015, Qantas will offer evening flights three times a week (Wednesday, Friday and Sunday) on QF95 (a 747) from Melbourne to Los Angeles, departing at 1745 and arriving at 1300. The return flights will run on Monday, Wednesday and Friday, departing at 1930 and arriving at 0600 two days later. QF94 continues to run daily.
From 1 February 2015, additional Sydney flights to Los Angeles will run daily on QF17 (a 747), departing at 1730 and arriving at 1205 the same day. The return QF18 service leaves Los Angeles at 2355 (ouch!) and arrives in Sydney at 0935 two days later.
Will that be easier? If you can sleep on the plane (and you don’t have a cross-country transfer), then the current arrangement is fine. If you’re awake the whole time, then having less of the US day to consume before you can go to bed could be helpful. Either way, you’ll benefit from faster ESTA processing in Los Angeles.
Qantas also flies to Los Angeles from Brisbane, but those flights aren’t changing.
Comments
3 responses to “Qantas Evening Flights To Los Angeles Could Be Less Exhausting”
Arriving in the afternoon is the way to go. I can’t ever get any “real” sleep on a plane. When you land, you still have an hour or so of getting through customs/immigration/luggage, heading to your final destination, and then settling in a bit (and having that glorious post-long-haul-flight-shower) .. By that point it’s early evening, you fight to stay awake a couple of hours, eat something and then fall asleep at 8/9pm.. You wake up and it’s 5/6am, you’re up a bit early, but it’s manageable easily from there on, and you did the bulk of it on your first evening.
Don’t even get me started on arriving at midnight/early-early morning… I wasted almost a whole week trying to adjust once.
I’ve always gotten there in the morning and soldiered on through the day. You get the connecting flight(s) and arrive at destination. Hit up Wendy’s on the way to final destination and have that beautiful shower then hit the sack.
The 6am arrival at LAX is the only reason I fly Qantas, ever.
At 6am you can get through customs and migration in under 15 minutes.
At 1pm, you’re lucky if you’re out of there in under two hours.
Virgin is next best, arriving about half an hour after Qantas.
Air NZ while super cheap, they arrive in the early afternoon and you’re in for a hell of a wait.
The current departure and arrival times are perfect.