Advice re Australia flights

zenshi

Am in stages of organising my trip down under next March/April, which has been in my head for many years. I’ve flown a fair bit but mainly to the US. 

I’ve shortlisted some flights ranging from £1000-£1,300. Ba/Qantas….Singapore airlines….American airlines. 

AA is showing as flexible fare whereas I’m not sure on the others. Is it better, jet lag wise, to fly forward or backward in time. AA changes at LAX. The others at Singapore. 

Thoughts very much welcomed

elsien

Jet lag tends to be worse when flying east, rather than flying west if that makes a difference to your route. 

comeandgo

When we fly to Australia we go via Singapore.  I find arriving In Australia I have no jet lag but returning I need about a week to recover.  My own thoughts on it is I’m so looking forward to my trip and long holiday that jet lag does not even get a look in but on returning to UK and leaving my family my mind and body are down so jet lag is allowed to take over.

JGB1955

I would vote for going via LAX.  We've flown to both Christchurch (NZ) and New York with little jet lag.  Flying back from NZ, it took me a good week before I felt human again.  We dealt with the NY issue by returning by sea; a pleasant trip of 5 x 23 hour days!

zenshi

AA is the one I’m leaning to at the mo, purely because it’s a flexible ticket. I’m open to other airlines, those three were just the ones I thought of first. Views on any aspect of flight will be useful. Flying into Brisbane if that makes any difference to the opinions. Thanks guys

TELLIT01

I suspect problems with jet lag are more to do with the person than the direction.  We flew to Hawaii from the UK without any stop over en-route.  I was like a zombie for 2 days and my wife was absolutely fine.

SiliconChip

I believe you'll still need an ESTA to transit LAX even if you don't leave the airport, which may affect your decision. I've travelled in both directions (to and from NZ) in the past and I had been planning to travel via Singapore with Singapore Airlines) for the first time in 2020 when Covid intervened, but with a couple of days in Singapore on the way out to reduce the impact of any jet lag on arrival in NZ.

CKhalvashi

Timing your sleep in flight is also a good way to get around any tiredness.

For every 3 hours you're jumping forward, you'll need to lose about an hour sleep-wise in flight, which is easy to do on a long haul sector such as this.

The worst ones for me are the 4-5 hour time differences, generally on a flight with a self-connected overnight stopover, than larger ones.

zagfles

Going to Aus it's significantly longer flying west, going to NZ it's similar whether east or west.

Jetlag IME is worse going east, but you can cheat, fly east but pretend you're flying west. Book a flight with a long daytime layover in Singapore, eg arriving morning SIN time and leaving evening for Aus/NZ. Then you can book the transit hotel for a daytime sleep at the time your body clock will be telling you it's night time. The rooms usually have no windows and are quiet, you book by the hour so a daytime booking is fine. It's quite cheap as well, maybe around £100 for a room for 4. The hotel is airside so no need to go through immigration etc and bags are checked through.