Before we had kids, I’d read, watch movies and sleep (I have the good fortune of being able to sleep in almost any circumstance). Back in the day when they’d let you do it, I would bring my cross-stitch on and sew. That was a huge time-killer. Unfortunately, I don’t think they allow you to have needles or sewing scissors on flights anymore.
When I was on a nicer British Air flight long ago, they had a bar in the middle of the plane. That was really nice - it’d give you somewhere to go during the flight that wasn’t your seat and you wouldn’t be standing in the middle of the aisle.
Nowadays I tend to have a lapful of kid. Thank God I don’t get as motion sick on planes these days as I used to.
You might want to sit down for part of that trip. You know, to read, grab a bite to eat, rehydrate yourself, listen to music, watch a movie. Stuff like that.
I fly a lot on long haul flights from DC to the Middle East. In my experience the problem with being on a plane is that there are very few options for how to spend your free time, so I like to travel with a variety of distractions to mix it up. I try to bring one novel, a couple of magazines that have lengthier articles (for me it is the Atlantic Monthly), some magazines with lots of short articles on a variety of subjects (the Week, or the Economist) and finally some entirely cheezy entertainment (for me magazines about PC games) plus an ipod full of tv shows.
The whole point is to find yourself so engrossed in something that you are unaware of the passage of time. I never quite know what mood is going to hit me on the plane, so I like the variety, plus having a choice is somehow comforting. Nothing is worse than having only a book on a plane and suddenly realizing you don’t particularly feel like reading it, then you spend 13 hours on a flight looking at a skymall catelogue.
Which reminds me, they don’t give you nearly enough to drink on these long flights. You can go without for a couple of hours on a domestic flight but for thirteen hours in a bone-dry cabin, you need to buy at least a liter of water once you get through airport security. In fact, if you get two and make it a point to drink a lot (of water), it’ll force you to get up and go to the bathroom frequently, which helps get the blood in your legs moving; you do not want to develop DVT, and dehydration+inactivity on very long flights are significant risk factors.
My stategy for long flights is to bring a China Mieville paperback. He writes biopunk/steampunk novels that seem about as long as Les Miserables and are about as dense, but more entertaining.
A few days ago I flew from the East coast to the West coast and finished The Iron Council just as the plane was touching down.
Noise cancelling headphones are fantastic!! They make all the difference between being able to listen to Mozart and being restricted to stuff that crosses over the red line on the VU meter every beat.
Music, books, noise canceling headphones. Try to get on the plane so hung over and exhausted you fall asleep anyway.
Read. Used to be books, but now I bring my Kindle. That way I can have a variety of material, so I can switch if I get bored.
Crossword puzzles. I bring several, and I try to get fairly difficult ones so that it takes me a good long time to solve them, and so they provide plenty of mental distraction.
Earplugs or noise-canceling headphones (or just regular comfortable headphones with some music) help a lot. A lot of what wears you out on an airplane (aside from all the obvious stuff) is the sound of the engines, which are, whether you realize it or not, rather loud. Just having that running in the background is a huge cause of pilot fatigue (hence all the super high-tech and high-price headsets for pilots).
I would generally recommend against drugging or drinking yourself into a stupor, just on the off chance that something might happen where you need to respond (plane is making an emergency landing, Russians have taken over and you need to assist the Sky Marshals and the President in retaking the plane, some pretty flight attendant starts winking at you, you know, whatever). But then, that’s me, I’ve been known to nod off during earthquakes.
The last time I flew from Amsterdam to Mexico City, I started out on the booze. I only had two gin-tonics, but I started watching Brüno and couldn’t stop laughing (out loud!) so they cut me off. But after the movie, I started playing with the language lessons. That was KLM; I’m not sure what other airlines have those personal movie/interactive things on board. It was so fun that I didn’t get to watch anything on my iPhone on either way of the trip!
I’ve not flown in several years, but I frequently take an 11 hour Megabus trip. Luckily the trip has three scheduled stops (two 1/2 hour, one hour) so I can get out and walk, get food, etc. Multiple movies are usually the ticket, but on my last trip I edited a concert I had shot. Being away from the Internet and TV forced me to stick with the job at hand and I was able to ship DVDs the next morning.
That’s not really a long flight, though. 4 hours? 5 hours? Any flight that is under 5 hours passes pretty quickly for me. It’s around the 6-7 hour mark that I start wanting to kill myself.
I agree with the noise-cancelling headphones. Flip the switch and aaaah - that low rumble just backs off. (And the … expressive… kiddies are toned down, too.)
It’s too bad my Bose are on their way out - I got them for xmas years ago and now the right side has a hiss-zzzt sound. But they are so expensive and I only travel a few times a year. Maybe next xmas.
Crossword puzzles AND kindle AND music AND movies. Yeah, the variety thing.
I can’t sleep, either. Even as a kid, I would stay up and watch my family sleep. Ambien, which is usually da bomb, doesn’t work for me.
I agree with the suggestion to have variety, but it also helps to just psych yourself out and don’t think about the time. I don’t even check it until near the end of the flight.
