Overseas airplane trips - how do you cope?

[Malintent]

best thing you can do for a baby that is screaming on descent is tell the mother to hold the baby's head back / chin up... That helps open the Eustachian tube to the throat and clear any pressure buildup in the ear.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

I fly Los Angeles to London round trip, in fact I was in the UK just last week. UK time is 8 hours ahead of Los Angeles. On the outbound flight LAX-LHR I usually take a late evening flight. Get to the airport in plenty time so I am not stressing about getting checked in etc even if I don't have to check bags in. I then have a few beers before boarding. On board I have a few more drinks, eat the meal with wine and by now I have forgotten where I am going and why. Then I put on a crap movie with subtitles and the reading makes me tired and I fall asleep for a few hours. LAX to LHR is about 11 hours in the air, depends on how late they are departing, they can actually do it in about 9.5 hours when they floor it. But the time change does mess you up for a few days but I can fight the tiredness off if I concentrate in not giving in to it. You could be sitting having a chat and all of a sudden you feel very sleepy. If I get up, go outside for some fresh air and come back I can get past the tiredness and carry on as normal. The return flight is totally different. I just cannot get to sleep on that flight. I've tried the eye mask and it didn't help.

I'm curious how you get "fresh air" on the flight.

 

[Worldtraveller]

I don't really sleep on planes, since my back bothers me too much when flying coach.

Now, when I worked for Lufthansa and got to travel in biz/first class. I would be fine.

I adjust to large (6+ hrs) time changes within a day or two. Smaller than that can often take me weeks to adjust, though.

 

[crazyfingers]

Once a year I go from Boston to Tokyo. All year long my wife and I pay for evrrything we possibly can using my United credit card to get the miles to upgrade to business class.

After almost 30 trips now I just stay awake for the whole ride to Tokyo going west. Arrive at the hotel around 6pm Tokyo time and go to bed around 8 or 9pm and I'm good to go the next morning. Going east is always worse. I try to sleep some but still I'm a mess for a couple days after. I use eye shades and ear plugs when I try to sleep.

Coming back it's a bit disconcerting. Fly out of Tokyo around 5pm and the sun is shining. Going east it turns night. Then day arrives. By the time I land in Boston it's night again assuming I change planes somewhere as neither United nor other Star Alliance carriers have Boston/Tokyo direct flights. Personally I like to fly Air Canada. They have great international business class pods and Boston to Torronto to Tokyo is reasonably direct. Avoid boston to los angeles to tokyo. It adds several hours to the ride.

Worse for me is the red-eye home from california to Boston. Coach class and the actual flying time with a good jet stream can be only 5 hours and sometimes less. Maybe 3 hours dozing at best. I really hate those east bound red-eyes.