What's the best time of day to fly between London and Miami?

[AllBuggiedOut]

It would be with 3 young kids (ages 2. 4 and 6). We've been advised to go for a late morning outbound flight; is that good advice? And what about the return? BA flights seem to be morning, but Virgin do afternoons. Would love to hear your advice and experiences please!

Late morning outbound flight is good.

Re the return you will find that the first Miami flight leaves early evening and not morning. The vast majority of US flights to the UK are overnight ones on the return leg getting into the UK early morning (these usually start arriving into UK airports around 7 am onwards).

Actually when I looked on BA's website (I just chose two random dates this July for outbound and return) the first flight out of Miami does not leave until 5.15pm (arriving into the UK at 6.35am the next day). The second one leaves there at 8.45pm (getting into the UK at 10.00am the next day). Its a five hour time difference between there and the UK.

Its a close call between BA and Virgin price wise, you may actually find that Virgin will charge more overall. Do cost compare. Also there has been much cost cutting across Virgin over the past few years (this has affected the overall quality of service offered to pax) and they are not generally regarded as being as innovative as they once were.

Also Miami is a dump of an airport, expect not much in terms of overall facilities.

ESTA (electronic US travel authorisation) is now mandatory for all pax entering the US regardless of age. ESTA is done online and is free. Only use the official US govt website; there are many dodgy ones out there who actually charge you (as well as scam your credit card!).

Very helpful, thanks. (And clearly my brain was not functioning when I looked at BA last night!)

Atilla is right about the flight times. We got to Florida regularly and have flown into Miami a few times and all the flights there are mid morning/lunchtime and always overnight flights home

If booking BA would recommend the later return flight as it gives you all some chance of sleeping - on the earlier one they wake you up for breakfast at around 5.30am English time which is half past midnight Florida time so you basically lose out more or less on a night's sleep unless you are a very heavy sleeper....

if you want to do stuff in miami on arrival rather than crashing at a hotel straight away get the early morning flight oubound, though it will feel like a very long day!We get the 1.30pm flight and head straight to the hotel, picking up a car the next day. this seems to mess around least with our body clocks.