9 Things to Do Before a Long-Haul Flight
The pre-flight routine that makes a long-haul flight far less brutal: pick your seat on purpose, download everything, and land feeling like a functioning human.
TRAVEL TIPS
6/16/20262 min read
A long flight never becomes pleasant. But it can become bearable — sometimes even productive — if you actually know how to prepare for it. At some point we got tired of arriving wrecked, so we built a pre-departure routine that's completely changed how we land on the other side.
Here's what we always do before a long-haul flight. Some of it you've heard before. Some of it probably not.
Pick Your Seat on Purpose
Not all seats are created equal, and leaving it to chance is how you end up next to the galley for ten hours. SeatGuru before booking shows you which rows are cramped, which ones sit right by the toilets (hello, foot traffic all night), and which ones back onto an emergency exit — usually the best legroom on the plane.
Download Everything Before You Board
Films, shows, podcasts, playlists, offline maps, anything you want to read. Onboard wifi is slow when it exists at all, and never cheap. Load your entertainment from home, not from 30,000 feet.
Bring Actual Food
Airline food is hit or miss, mostly miss. A few nutrient-dense snacks — nuts, dried fruit, a decent bar or two — make a real difference in how you feel landing, not just how hungry you are mid-flight.
Switch Your Watch to Destination Time Immediately
The moment you sit down, set your watch — or your head — to the time zone you're landing in. Your body starts adjusting earlier than you'd think, and every hour of head start helps with the jet lag waiting for you on arrival.
Hydrate More Than Feels Necessary
Cabin air is dry. Properly dry. Drink water constantly, skip the alcohol even though it's tempting at 35,000 feet, and bring a decent moisturizer — your skin will thank you somewhere over the Atlantic.
Bring Your Own Noise-Cancelling Headphones
Best money you'll spend if you fly long-haul more than once a year. The airline ones cancel nothing and aren't guaranteed anyway.
Check In Online, 24 Hours Out
Not just for seat selection — it means your boarding pass is ready before you've even left the house, and one less queue at the airport.
Keep Essential Documents in One Place
Passport, travel insurance, hotel and car bookings — everything within reach, no digging through a bag at 3am in a foreign airport. We use one small pouch for every travel document plus the cables we always need for phones, tablets and headphones. One pouch, everything in it, zero panic.
Pack a Sleep Kit
Eye mask, earplugs, comfortable socks, a travel pillow that's actually decent. If you manage even a few real hours of sleep, you land as a functioning human instead of a question mark.
None of this takes more than half an hour to put together. The payoff, in terms of how you feel stepping off the plane, is completely out of proportion to the effort. Start with one or two of these, then build the rest in over time.
Long-Haul Flights: Quick Questions
What should you do before a long-haul flight? Pick your seat with SeatGuru, download offline entertainment, pre-set your watch to destination time and pack a small sleep kit.
How do you avoid jet lag? Switch to destination time the moment you sit down, hydrate constantly, and skip the alcohol.
Save this on Pinterest as your pre-flight checklist — and if you're heading somewhere far, see exactly what we packed for three months in the Indian Ocean.