Surviving Your First Long-Haul Flight
Seat choice, sleep, water, movement and jet lag, so you arrive somewhere far away in a state where you can still enjoy it.
9 min read
Eight hours in a seat is not difficult, it is just long. The people who step off a long-haul flight looking human are not lucky, they prepared slightly better than everybody else.
None of this requires spending money on a better cabin.
Choosing a seat
Window seats are better for sleeping, because you have something to lean on and nobody climbs over you. Aisle seats are better if you intend to move around, drink a lot of water or have long legs.
Avoid the last row, which often does not recline and sits beside the toilets, and the row directly in front of an exit row for the same reason. Seats near the wings are the smoothest in turbulence.
On a first long-haul, paying a small fee to choose a seat is usually worth it.
What to have with you at the seat
The bag you keep at your feet matters more than the one in the locker. Once the lights go down, getting up to rummage overhead is a small ordeal.
At your feet: water bottle, earphones, eye mask, warm layer, lip balm, moisturiser, toothbrush, medication, a charged battery and something to read that does not need a screen.
- An empty bottle to fill after security
- A jumper or scarf, cabins get genuinely cold
- Eye mask and ear plugs, even if you think you will not sleep
- Lip balm and moisturiser for very dry cabin air
Sleeping on a plane
Set your watch to the destination time as soon as you board and eat and sleep according to that clock rather than the one you left behind.
If it is night at your destination, decline the meal, block out the light and sound and try to sleep even if the sleep is poor. Broken sleep on the correct schedule beats good sleep on the wrong one.
Alcohol makes falling asleep easier and the sleep worse, and dries you out at altitude. One drink is fine. Three will cost you the next day.
Water and movement
Cabin air is drier than most deserts. Drink more water than feels necessary and go easy on coffee.
Get up every couple of hours, walk to the galley and back, and roll your ankles while seated. This is genuinely about health, not just comfort, as long periods of immobility carry a small blood clot risk. Compression socks are cheap and help.
Turbulence, since it is on your mind
Turbulence is uncomfortable, not dangerous. Aircraft are built to flex through far more of it than passengers ever experience, and pilots route around the worst of it because it spills the drinks, not because it threatens the plane.
If it bothers you, sit over the wings, keep your seatbelt loosely fastened the whole flight and watch the cabin crew. Their calm is not an act, they have felt it a thousand times.
Landing and the first day
Jet lag is easier travelling west than east. Whichever direction you go, the same principle applies: get outside into daylight as soon as you can and stay awake until a locally sensible bedtime.
A short nap of no more than half an hour is allowed if you are unsafe on your feet. Anything longer and you will be wide awake at three in the morning.
Plan a gentle first day. A walk, a meal, an early night. Save the big plans for day two, when you are actually there in every sense.
In short
A long flight is an endurance exercise with very low stakes. Comfort, water, movement and the right clock will get you through it.
Land, get into the daylight, and let the trip start properly tomorrow.
