100 Tips to Slightly Improve Your Travel Experience: #33 Overnight Flights and Sleep Deprivation

I loath overnight airline flights.  If I had my way, overnight flights would banned. The combination of jet lag, caused by the change in local sunrise and sunset times, and sleep deprivation leaves me feeling miserable for the first couple of days of most trips from north America to Europe. 

For years I tried and mostly failed to fight sleep deprivation, by trying everything I could to sleep on the overnight flight going east.  As I recall I have flown the Atlantic 15 times, and only twice have I slept in any meaningful way.  What I have found is the harder I try, the less meaningful sleep I seem to get.  My body is not accustomed to sleeping sitting up, often in a cramped seat, surrounded by strangers and strange sounds.  

A few years ago I was lamenting an upcoming overnight flight from California to the Washington DC, and how I never seem to sleep on overnight flights a few years ago, and my then boss Charlie offered the best advice I have ever heard. 

• Don't plan on sleeping on the plane. 
• Take a good book or two, or movies on your tablet and plan on staying up late reading or watching video. 
• If sleep happens, it happens, if it doesn't don't beat yourself up about it. You will only feel worse for trying to force yourself. 
• Wear earplugs or headphones. 
• Avoid excessive alcohol, it only dehydrates you. 
• Avoid sleeping pills, they generally require eight hours to wear off, and you will seldom have 8 hours to sleep on the flight, resulting in your arriving in a drug altered state. 
• Don't plan anything for the first day.  When you get there, have a little breakfast, skipping the caffeine, drink a couple of glasses of water and take a long nap, 3 to 5 hours.  Then get up, have dinner at a normal local time and go to bed at a normal local time. 
• I find it important that I get up in the afternoon, and stay awake for a few hours, otherwise I have trouble sleeping that first night. 
• When traveling away from home on an international overnight flight, I now arrange to have the hotel room available when I arrive. Even if it means paying for the night that I am flying, being able to go to the hotel and going to sleep as soon as I want is worth every dollar it costs. The last time we flew to Iceland from the United States, we arrived at the hotel at 7:30 AM (having landed, cleared customs and immigration and picked up a rental car that morning) and the hotel clerk said "the computer says you checked in last evening, here are your keys" when we arrived at the hotel. It was $200 well spent.  

You still have jet lag to work through, but taking sleep deprivation out of the picture, eases that transition greatly.  

Some added thoughts.  Business Class and First Class are less crowded, with bigger seats and fewer people make it easier to sleep. Some people are able to sleep anyplace at anytime.  I am not one of those lucky people. 

When have I slept well?  On the trip to Spain a couple of years ago, I had paid extra for bulkhead row seats in coach.  As the plane was about to taxi, I noticed that in the center, one row back, and entire middle row was empty. I moved back, flipped the armrests up, and as soon as we were at altitude, stretched out across the seats.  I read, watched a movie and without forcing it, I slept for probably three hours.  About 20 years ago, an overnight flight from New York to Athens, I was in the first row of coach, with small and quiet people on both sides of me, I slept about 5 hours on that 10 hour flight.