4 Best Pre-Plane Tips to Improve Your Flying Experience

We’re on the road again soon and, although this is a very short jaunt, thinking about airplanes reminds us to tell you everything we’ve learned from our hard-won million-miler status to make your pre-plane experience better. Travel by plane is not what it used to be; there are strikes and delays and yes, the seats actually are getting smaller – sometimes while you’re in them. In this post, we’ll cover our top pre-plane tips to help you prepare for a long-haul flight.

Eat Right

With us it’s food first, always!

• Eat a light but filling meal before the flight, so that you are not victim to the food on the plane.
• Bring snacks: we travel with nuts, dried fruit, and sometimes protein bars. We’ve also sometimes packed more elaborate food, like wraps, oatmeal, and cups of noodles (just add hot water!).
• Take a water bottle and fill it up after you go through security.
• Consider ordering a special meal. We used to do this because we were vegans, whereupon we discovered that special meals get served first. Bonus! The food is often better, but very occasionally you will find that they’re serving something you love to everyone but you. ‘Asian vegetarian’ is our favourite of the dozens of special meals available, because it usually means Indian food, which is flavourful and usually without much dairy. (Dairy on planes = extra bloating and gassiness, which you don’t need.)

Dress for Success

Comfortable clothing is a must. For us, that’s:

• Two or three light layers, because temperatures vary during the flight. We recommend things with buttons and zippers rather than pullovers, because you will be operating in a very small space. (Note: some airlines provide you with a sleeping outfit when you fly first class. We took one of these once and fight over it all the time, on planes and elsewhere.)
• A hoodie, which can help block light around your eyes and makes you feel like you have privacy even when you don’t. (Note: one of us has never worn a hoodie and never would. But he’s way classier than the other of us.)
• A big scarf can serve as a blanket, pillow, eyeshade, or teddy bear in a pinch. Who doesn’t love a scarf?
• Compression socks: we haven’t ever actually worn these, but we’ve done our homework and think we should. So we’re going to get some for our next long trip.
• Slip-on shoes, both for the security line and so that you don’t end up walking to the bathroom in your socks (so gross!). We always want to wear huge heavy hiking boots to decrease our luggage weight, but it’s not worth it.
• If you wear contact lenses, leave them off for long trips.

Be Prepared

• Register for TSA Precheck (for U.S. domestic travel), Global Entry (for international travel for U.S. persons) or Registered Traveller (for international travel for U.K. persons) status if you fly even once every three months. They save a lot of time and hassle whilst queueing.
• Charge your devices and download things to watch or listen to if that’s how you plan to spend your time.
• Bring a real live paper book, just in case things go wrong. Also a notebook and a pen (the pen will be useful when you discover that you have to fill out landing forms).
• Download your boarding passes, just in case the you lose internet access as you are boarding. This has happened to us more than once and it is sub-optimal.
• Bring earplugs, noise cancelling headphones, a travel pillow or pillowcase stuffed with clothes, an eyeshade, hand lotion, moisturizer even if you are a man – seriously trust us, lip balm, hand sanitiser, and anything else you know you will need. Put all of these in a single baggie and leave it near the top of your personal item.

Expect the Worst

We think this is good advice in life in general, but especially in an airport. During these trying times, you are just begging for disappointment if you don’t plan ahead.

• Get to the airport in plenty of time. Lines are longer than they have been for years and airports make people weird and hostile. Allow at least an hour and a half for domestic travel Tuesday-Thursday; two hours on the weekend; longer if you are flying internationally. The worst thing that will happen is that you’ll have more time to spend in duty free stores.
• Join Flight Aware (U.K. address here) to get real-time information about where your flight is.
• Delayed flights are a fact of life. Consider doing a little homework on Sleeping in Airports about the places you might get stuck.
• Do not jump into the first security line/queue you see. We have a whole system worked out, which is an entirely unscientific proprietary algorithm. Here’s what we can say in public: look at the people in the line. You can often tell from a quick look who is going to have to unpack everything in order to get at the much-too-large bottle of motor oil and who will not. We have heard that heading left often works (because most people are right-handed and therefore right-prejudiced), but can’t swear this is true. Let us know if you run experiments and we’ll share our algorithm.

Please, let us know your best pre-plane tips for long flights!