What do people do on long flights?

[turbineseaplane]

Mostly long for the days of no internet on there (or smartphones) when it was truly a full unplug for X amount of hours.

I mean no expectation of availability as well as everyone being forced to sit, ponder, do something other than diddle a device. It was good for people.

Those with the ability and discipline still take advantage I think. Read a book, listen to some music, enjoy the view, sit with your thoughts, chat with your neighbor and meet someone new to you. It's healthy.

 

[Madhatter32]

And, anorther thing I do, on planes that provide this, is study and stare at the maps - sometimes dangling from the ceiling, sometimes at the back of passengers' seats - of the flight path during the journey.

I love maps, and I love travel, and some of the regions, countries, cities, seas, I have flown over are places of legend, an experience which leaves me breathless with awed wonder.

Ha. I also study the flight path map ... measuring the plane's progress in coffee spoons so to speak -- as T.S.Elliot would say.

 

[boswald]

Only in cattle class. Business/First Class seats are very comfortable.🤗 I got a free upgrade to Business class once. Once.

On the my flight from Houston to Taipei I mostly tried to sleep to adjust for the time zone difference. From Taipei back to Houston (16 hours in cattle class😓), I mostly stayed up watching inflight movies. I napped for 10-15 minutes at a twice to take the edge off. When I got back home, it was 2am. I fell asleep before my head hit the pillow. Woke up 6 hours later, no jet lag. The wife and kids were jet lagged for 3 days. Come on, man. Stay awake during the day even if you're dog tired. You'd only be jet lagged for a day.

On long fights, aisle seat is a must for me. Close to bathroom is a bonus.😉

"Cattle Class," I love it.

 

[VisceralRealist]

I hate long flights. I find it very difficult to sleep on a plane, but I often find I'm too tired to do anything else. I end up nodding off frequently, but only for short amounts of time. The exception is if I'm flying first class and can actually lie down and sleep properly, but I've only done that a couple of times, and can't afford to do it regularly. I love to travel, but the long flight part of it I don't look forward to.

If we're not talking a 10+ hour flight, then on a shorter "long flight", I will listen to podcasts and read. Hopefully on a flight like that it won't be the case that I try and read two lines and then immediately start to nod off. Anything longer though, and my "activities" only work for so long until I'm just sitting there incredibly tired and unable to do anything about it.

 

[Dex762]

In my experience been on military flights the seat is nothing fancy thing really and loves long distance flight, my first oversea flight from Australia to Malaysia on C130 Herclues (no tv at all) living there for 2 years then back to Aussie on Boeing 707 flight from Malaysia via Phillipines stop over 2 hours then straight back toAussie, been numbers of times on military flights when my dad retired I really miss going on military flights, some years ago my first time on public oversea flight it made me so nervous I don't know why

 

[theluggage]

What do you do on long flight?

I try to concentrate on the mantra "This too, shall pass..." while trying to slip into a map channel-induced trance & maybe half-listening to an audiobook or music 🙂

Fortunately, my days of needing to fly from UK to California several times a year have indeed passed, so there you go.