If you’ve ever planned a family trip to Greece, you know how it goes. Everyone has an opinion about the islands.
My husband wanted to hop between three of them. My mom wanted somewhere she could actually unpack a suitcase for more than two nights. My dad, who does not do beach chairs, wanted ruins. Six months of group-chat debates later, we had an itinerary everyone could live with.
What almost got overlooked in all that back and forth was the flight itself. Ten hours from the US with my two children, my husband, my dad, and my mom, who has a injured knee was a little wary of sitting that long.
With all of that in mind, business class flights to Athens went from something we’d never have considered to something we actually looked into. We weren’t sure it was worth it right up until we boarded.
If you’re planning Greece with the whole crew, this is the piece we wish someone had handed us before our trip. The islands are more fun to debate, but how you get there has a lot to do with how the trip actually starts. And getting there is what we want to share with you.
Why Day One in Athens Doesn’t Wait for You to Recover
Athens is one of those places where it’s very easy to convince yourself you can start sightseeing straight away. You land, drop your bags, and suddenly the Acropolis is right there on the itinerary looking completely reasonable.
Well, it isn’t quite so reasonable when everyone is jet-lagged.
The climb itself is a real workout. There are stairs, uneven ground, long stretches without much shade, and enough walking around central Athens that a rough night in the air can catch up with you quickly. You don’t need to be an athlete, but it definitely helps to start the day with some energy.
We’d made that mistake before on a completely different trip. Years ago, we landed in Rome off a red-eye and pushed through a full sightseeing day because we’d paid for the day and didn’t want to waste it. By mid-afternoon, my husband was sitting on a curb outside the Colosseum while our toddler had a complete meltdown. Somehow, it still took us a few more trips to stop doing that to ourselves.
This time, with my parents coming with us, we picked an overnight flight that landed in Athens in the late afternoon. That gave us just enough time to get to the hotel, have dinner nearby, and call it a night without feeling like we should squeeze in any sightseeing.
We also didn’t make any plans for the next morning, and that turned out to be one of the best decisions of the trip. My mom slept in, the kids took their time over breakfast, and nobody was watching the clock. By the time we headed out, everyone felt like they’d actually arrived.
Getting There: The Flight Itself
What surprised us once we sat down to book was just how much the whole trip still funnels through Athens. Santorini, Mykonos, Naxos, and Crete don’t have nonstop flights from the US, so you’ll usually continue on from Athens before reaching the islands.
Currently, nonstop flights to Athens, Greece, from the USA operate from: New York (JFK), Newark, Atlanta, Boston, Washington Dulles, Chicago O’Hare, Philadelphia, Charlotte, and Dallas.
The airline options are fairly broad too, with Delta, United, and American, plus Emirates’ fifth-freedom service.
We hadn’t realized there were so many nonstop options. For us, that meant flying straight from Newark to Athens instead of having to change planes somewhere along the way. We still looked at the cheaper connecting flights more times than we care to admit, but in the end, having one less connection really did matter.
The route was the easy part. Booking a business-class flight to Athens, however, also meant comparing departure times, aircraft, seat maps, and whether the lie-flat seat we wanted would actually be on our flight. Before long, we were deep in a research rabbit hole, with every answer leading to three more questions.
In moments like that, when you’re staring down too many options, it helps to remember you don’t have to sort through all of it alone. Platforms like BusinessClass.com let you compare business class flights in one place, or request a callback from an agent if you’d rather just describe what you need and let someone else find it for you.
Making the Actual Flight Time Work for Three Generations
Ten hours is ten hours no matter the cabin, and getting six people through it still came down to a lot of small things we hadn’t thought about while booking.
My Mom Still Needed to Move
The lie-flat seat made a big difference, but she still got up every couple of hours to move around. So when you book a seat for your parents, make sure they have free aisle access.
The thing we forgot completely was compression socks. We’d somehow thought of them as something you need when you’re stuck upright in economy, but they’re still useful on a long flight even with a flat bed.
My Dad Was Fine on His Own
I had quietly assumed both of my parents would need roughly the same things. Not even close.
My dad chose the window seat, started a movie after dinner, and fell asleep before he reached the end of it. At one point I leaned over to check whether he needed anything and got waved away because I was apparently interrupting the movie he’d woken back up to watch.
After all my worrying, he was probably the lowest-maintenance person in the family.
The Kids Lasted Until They Didn’t
The kids had far more to watch than we expected, and the in-flight entertainment did a lot of the heavy lifting for us. We also kept a small bag next to the seat so we weren’t digging through the overhead bins all night. Here’s what we had inside:
- Child-size headphones
- A magnetic drawing board
- A sticker book they hadn’t seen before
- One downloaded movie each as backup
- A change of clothes in case dinner ended up on somebody’s lap
We saved the new activities for later instead of handing everything out at once, which stretched them surprisingly far. Between those and the cartoons on board, the kids were occupied for a good chunk of the flight.
The one thing we got wrong was assuming they’d sleep for at least a couple of hours once they’d had their fill of movies and games. They didn’t. By the end, they were overtired and restless, so next time we’d start winding things down earlier and definitely skip the soda after dinner.
If a friend were doing this trip with kids and parents, we’d tell them not to count on the overnight timing to do all the work. Give everyone their own way to settle in, and start winding the kids down earlier than you think you need to.
Ferry Logistics Once You’ve Landed
Landing in Athens, however, isn’t the finish line if the islands are the destination. Since most of our vacation was going to be in Naxos, after two days in the city, we still had another leg ahead of us: getting six people and all our luggage to Piraeus for the ferry.
What we were not ready for was just how big Piraeus is, and arriving at the port does not mean you’re anywhere near the right gate. With two kids, my parents, and enough luggage for two weeks, everything took longer than we thought.
We lost time to:
- Traffic on the way down
- Unloading everyone’s bags
- Figuring out where our ferry was actually leaving from
- Walking farther than expected once we got there
We still made it with about fifteen minutes to spare, but by then my dad was checking the departure time every thirty seconds and we were seriously regretting how confidently we’d planned the morning.
If we did it again, we’d get to Piraeus much earlier and happily sit near the gate with a coffee for half an hour instead of spending the whole ride wondering if we’re about to miss the ferry.
The Part of the Trip to Plan First
We used to book whatever was cheapest and just grit our teeth through the travel day, treating it like a toll we paid before the real trip started. We wouldn’t say we’ve completely figured out the perfect way to do it now, but this trip went better than the ones before it.
One of our clearest memories from that first slow morning in Athens isn’t the Acropolis. It’s my mom sitting at an outdoor taverna table with her coffee while the kids chased a stray cat around the square. She looked relaxed, which was exactly what we’d been hoping for when we started overthinking the journey in the first place.
The one thing we do regret is not booking the long-haul leg earlier. By the time we finally made up our minds, the fares had already gone up. Next time we’re traveling with the whole crew, that’s the part we’re sorting out first.
