I’m doing my first international, long-haul flight in a few days, and it’s for a short trip. Really nervous about jet lag, sleep, what to do on the plane etc. I leave Los Angeles on Saturday, 4/25 at 2:30pm PST, and arrive in Paris on Sunday 4/26 at 10:45am local time. I depart Paris on Wednesday, 4/29 at 9:15am and arrive at 11:40am PST back home. I wouldn’t have done such a short trip for my first time but it’s my grandma’s last trip out of the country and my first, so I wanted to join her. She’s flown internationally more times than I can count and she doesn’t need much sleep, so she’s not concerned. She says to just take a short nap when I get to Paris and I’ll be fine. I’m excited to see Paris and I know it’ll be fun, but I am having a LOT of anxiety about: Being jet lagged throughout the trip and being destroyed when I get back home. I don’t want to feel out of it for days but I can see myself having that experience. Do I even try to adjust to local time in Paris for such a short trip? Being on a plane for so long. Like I can’t even conceptualize having to be on a plane for almost 12 hours. What do I even do? Sleep? Stay up? When do go back to work. I called out Thursday 4/30 to be safe, do I need to do Friday 5/1 as well? Can anyone help me out here?

I have an 8 month old and will need to take a 2 hour flight. One option will require waking him up around 5am and hope he can fall back asleep on the way to the airport or do a 1pm flight. The only reason we are considering the 7:30am flight is because we have a family gathering the evening we land and figure we will have more time to rescue a nap or two after we land! Let me know your thoughts and experiences please!

If my flight arrives from JFK/Nyc (6:00 am) to SFO/San Francisco (9:30am), and I need to self transfer to an international flight within SFO by 12:30 pm (flying to Tahiti), is that enough time? I will only be doing carry on (so not checking in bags). Is there a separate long process to go through since I'm going from domestic to international flight, even though I won't be leaving the airport? Would I need to go thru TSA again? Just wanted to account for long lines and delays.