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I am thinking about taking my family to Doha next year, but the thing that puts me off is the 01.30am flight back to Gatwick. Has anyone done this with young children (my youngest will be 15 months)?
I am thinking we will move to a cheap hotel for out last ‘night’ but my wife thinks it is a bit mad.I’d pick QR3 or QR5 to LHR, leave the day before and avoid the cheap hotel.
I’ve done a 0130 from DXB (which is UTC+4 not UTC+3 like DOH) with small children. It wasn’t as bad as it seems as we made a very conscious effort to get our routine back to UK time over the last few days. Negotiated a 5pm late check out and then hung around the hotel before getting to the airport at around 11pm. The children were so tired that they actually slept pretty well on the flight back.
I’d pick QR3 or QR5 to LHR, leave the day before and avoid the cheap hotel.
Gatwick is only 20 minutes from us, whereas Heathrow is just over an hour. I know the options to LHR are significantly better so I definitely need to think about it! Thanks for the info.
Why not just mostly stick with UK timings the whole trip, Arabian timezones are close enough to the UK anyway.
On our recent trip to Asia my 4yo child didn’t really adjust, but waking at noon and sleeping at 2am is sort of normal in some of Asia anyway…
At 15 months I think we would just have had to let him sleep in the baby carrier if we were taking a flight at 2am (= 11pm UK time). The problem is if he is awake and very tired but not enough to just fall asleep no matter what, then he will start screaming and fighting. To avoid that happening at 11pm he would probably need to have a nap at 6-7pm without that being his main night sleep, which means he would have had to wake up at 9am or later that day. And trying to plan timings doesn’t always work anyway (what if the flight is delayed)
Why not just mostly stick with UK timings the whole trip, Arabian timezones are close enough to the UK anyway.
On our recent trip to Asia my 4yo child didn’t really adjust, but waking at noon and sleeping at 2am is sort of normal in some of Asia anyway…
At 15 months I think we would just have had to let him sleep in the baby carrier if we were taking a flight at 2am (= 11pm UK time). The problem is if he is awake and very tired but not enough to just fall asleep no matter what, then he will start screaming and fighting. To avoid that happening at 11pm he would probably need to have a nap at 6-7pm without that being his main night sleep, which means he would have had to wake up at 9am or later that day. And trying to plan timings doesn’t always work anyway (what if the flight is delayed)
Yeah that’s a really good point, I never really thought about it that way!
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