Sick of the flight after two hours? What will you do for ten? Here are some helpful tips to get you through a long international flight.
Now that you have a better idea of what your packing list will look like, it’s time to think about what you will actually do on your long international flight. If you have a delay in an airport, you can spend a lot of time walking around, finding a good restaurant, or even finding a bench to take a nap on. In a cramped airplane, you usually aren’t so lucky.
The same air is being recycled over and over again, your neighbor is snoring and you are sick of pacing back and forth in the same 50 feet of walkway. If you can even get up. You feel this way only two hours in. How are you going to feel after another ten? Here are some helpful tips to get you through a long international flight.
Most international flights these days give you access to all kinds of movies, TV shows, games, and music. You could spend your whole flight watching movies. Note that while some airlines have screens on the back of the seat in front of you, other airlines expect you to put the content on your own device. Make sure to charge your devices and download the content you want before you take off. If your airline requires that you download an app, be sure to do so while you have good WiFi. Otherwise, you might not have access to the content for the whole flight.
It can be hard to concentrate on a book for the whole flight, but it is good to have them as options throughout your trip. They might even be a way to make yourself feel sleepy. If you find a good, new podcast before a long international flight, you will have hours of content to listen to.
One of the worst things you can do on a long international flight is to ignore your neighbors for the first hour or two. Besides flight attendants, these people are going to have the most impact on your enjoyment of your flight. So, strike up a good conversation from the start. They might be a bit more forgiving when you wake them up from an hour nap or spill your drink on them. You might even have opportunities to share more about your interests and hobbies or learn about theirs, or even start digging into spiritual topics with them.
Often on a long international flight, you can eat way too much and feel pretty gross during the flight. What happens is you eat before you board because you aren’t sure when your next meal is. Then they actually serve you food in the first hour and you feel obligated to eat that too. You snack for the next eight hours because of not knowing exactly when the next meal is. Want to avoid all of that? Ask customer service or a flight attendant when the planned meals are.
One of the worst things to do on an international flight is to stay in your seat the whole time. But sometimes you are stuck. There is a good chance you will not get an aisle seat. So, anytime someone in your row leaves, stand up with them and stretch!
This can be the easiest part for some and the hardest for others. Some of us can sleep the majority of a long international flight, even skipping the meals. Others can’t sleep a wink and end up watching five movies. Even if you struggle to sleep during flights, figure out what time it is at your destination, and see if you can sleep some while it is nighttime there. That might end up helping your jet lag.
