Longhaul Flight Timing

[Tusa]

Hey all, we're flying from London to San Francisco in May with our little girl who'll be 21 Months. I'm trying to work out when the best flight will be? We've flown with her plenty within Europe, she flies well and is generally happy, but we've never done long haul.

All the advice says fly when they would be having their overnight sleep, but that isn't option with the flight times available. She currently sleeps for 2 hours ish at about midday and then goes to sleep for the night at about 7:30-8. The main options for flights seem to be around:
10:25 take off, land 13:30 local time or
13:00 take off, land 16:00 local time

The first option will go over her nap time and into bedtime a bit. But maybe we can try just stringing her bedtime out for as long as possible and getting her down early? But we do then have most of an 11 hour flight with a wide awake baby.

The second option she'll theoretically sleep for half of it, but then we basically wake her up in the middle of the night as far as she's concerned and then try and get her to sleep again later.

I'm confused any top tips?

I much prefer the 13:00 flight time - with everything going on at the airport you should be able to keep dd awake until you are on the plane, then just let her go to sleep whenever.

When you get there, go outside till bedtime (the daylight makes a big difference) then do bedtime as normal.

What CMOTDibbler wrote.

Have done both those timings into SF and I prefer the later one. Don't forget too that you would need to check in around 3 hours prior to departure anyway and a 7.30-8.00am arrival to check in would make an already long day even longer.

Will your child have her own seat; if finances allow I would buy her a seat. She will be too long in the body to use a skycot. Do not rely on the airline to fully provide; take foodstuffs she likes and plenty of it. Leave any uneaten food, particularly fruit, behind on the aircraft on arrival.

Thanks guys, that's really useful. I will try and make the extra seat work, I think it will be worth it.