TripHip - Travel Tips and Advice for Traveling on a Budget

Long-haul flights can feel like they take forever. You can break up the time a bit by getting up and walking around at least once an hour (or in between flight movies).

Stretch a bit if you can, so that you don't get cramped up.

Splashing water on your face helps too.

A great way to make it through a long-haul flight (one that is 6-7 hours or more) is to take a sleeping pill right after they serve dinner. Then you can get out your neck pillow, put on your eye mask, wrap yourself in the airline blanket and fall asleep until breakfast.

That way you'll be nice and refreshed when you reach your destination!

(Make sure your sleeping pill isn't too heavy, and/or make sure it's one where you won't be incredibly drowsy upon waking up... as that would be counterproductive!)

It's a good idea to bring your own snacks onto airplanes. That way, if you get the munchies, you're not at the mercy of the flight attendants (who often only have pretzels on hand for hungry fliers).

Airlines always try to overbook their flights, if they can. If you are not in a hurry to get to your destination, tell the airline personnel at check-in that you are willing to give up your seat if the flight is overbooked. Ask what kind of compensation you will receive for giving up your seat. Usually the airline will offer to put you in a hotel for the night, book you on the next available flight, provide you with meal vouchers, and give you a free plane ticket to and from your destination of choice.

This happened to me once when I was flying Virgin Atlantic from London to the US.

If you are allowed to choose your seat when you select your flight, carefully study the seat map for the plane. You can often tell which seats will offer a little more (and sometimes a lot more) legroom than the other seats.

Look in particular for seats that are directly behind the partition for business class. These seats often have lots of legroom.

Also look for seats that are right behind, or near, the bathrooms. If you don't mind people queuing up in front of you to use the loo, these seats usually offer prime leg space.

Another idea is to look for the seats next to the emergency exits. Sometimes these seats have more leg space.

I’ve flown with my Pomeranian a few times, and here are some tips I’ve picked up along the way:

From time to time, feed your dog an ice cube or two. This will prevent dehydration and give her something to chew on for a few moments!

See if you can get a mild sedative for your dog to help keep her calm throughout the flight, especially during take-off and landing, and also in case of any turbulence.

And of course – make sure your dog does her toilet business outside right before going through security.

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If you are searching for plane tickets and you happen to find some that involve really long layovers (6 hours or more), consider whether you might actually be interested in quickly checking out that city during your layover. This might make that ticket more appealing than tickets with shorter layovers.

For instance, I once flew from the US to India, with a 6 hour layover in Amsterdam. You can bet that we made the most of that layover by going out and seeing Amsterdam! It was great.

If you can get a ticket with a long layover in an interesting place, it's like getting a little bonus "trip within a trip".

Just make sure that you can an eye on the clock, and get back to the airport in plenty of time to go through security and make your next flight.