Silly question..just curious

When I fly from Chicago they immediately serve "dinner" (even when the flight is 8:15 PM). Then about an hour and a half before landing they serve breakfast, and we land at 9:30 AM or so. You should call your airline to see what their policy is, since you have a longer flight from the west coast.

Let's see. There is a nine hour time difference between LA and Munich, so when you leave LAX just before 9 PM, it will already be 6 AM in Munich. And you know it will be several hours before they get everything together and turn down the lights and start the movie, maybe 8 AM Munich time.

When you arrive in Munich, it will only be about 8 AM back home, but it will be almost dinner time and only a few hours untill bed time, so I don't think it will be a good idea to sleep much on the plane. Sleeping until almost arrival time would be a lot like arriving in the early morning, which I generally do, and going right to bed.

If you really leave LAX at 8:40 PM and arrive in Munich at 5:00 PM you must have either several stops or a long layover somewhere. I don't think there is any way you can expect to have the lights off for 7-8 hours.

We left LAX at 6:10pm on Lufthansa for Frankfurt. It was dinner time for us and they served dinner. Afterwards, we watched a movie as it became dark outside. After the movie, it was night time for us and we slept a lot on the plane. They did serve breakfast a couple of hours before arrival. That would have been 8.0hrs into the flight. We arrived in Frankfurt at 14:00 their time. We were in great shape. About 6.0hrs. sleep. We then took a connecting flight to Florence and arrived there at 17:00. Note that this was only 9:00am for us in California time. Still, we immediately went out and spent 4 hours in Florence. Bed time was about 22:00 Florence time and 2:00PM California time. We didn't have much jet lag at all.

It is a direct flight from LAX to MUC. It departs our time of 8:40 and arrives their time of 5:00 PM.

I thought it might be a good flight for not getting too much jet lag because we will get there, rent a car, drive to Austria, settle in, eat dinner and go to bed. I'm sure we will be tired still, since we really won't have had much sleep.

The down side is that we will lose our first day in Europe, but if I feel better, it will be worth it.

The plane maintains it's own time schedule. It is nearly a 12 hr flight. Part of the meal service is just to absorb time. I am sure you will be served a meal about an hour after take off. British Air leaves Denver about the same time and serves a meal. But that doesn't mean you have to eat it. As part of our adjustment for jet lag we get up very earlier on day of departure -- 3 or 4 am. Have an earlier dinner at the airport after checking in. Within 30 minutes of take off we have the eye share on, ear plugs in, shoes off, get as comfortable as possible and ignore the meal. We can generally get six ir so hours of sleep. They will turn the lights down after the dinner but the sun will come up around 2 so the cabin will be light. About two hours or so prior to landing they will wake the cabin and serve a light breakfast even if landing at 5 pm.

So, if flying from Seattle to Frankfurt (13:35 to 08:35 per our confirmation) on Lufthansa, would we also get dinner and breakfast? How far into the flight for dinner?

The what and when will vary according to route, time of departure and arrival and Catering provisions out of the Departure City. No two Airlines do it exactly the same or at the same time. So no one can really predict specific times unless you are the Incharge and have done the same route repeatedly. Even that can change. Check the website.

Don't expect to get much sleep. We've been known to disturb you at just the right or wrong time. Sorry, that's unavoidable. We usually try not to wake you to ask if you want a meal. The F/A's just save you one and catch you when you awake. That's common courtesy.

The lights won't be off for 7-8 hours of sleep. That would be nice, though. It's true, part of the meal service is just to absorb time. 90-95% of my "real work" the Flight Safety Inspections/Pre-flight Briefings/Emergency/Servicability Checks is done before Pax even set foot on board. The other 5% is what you see.