TripHip - Travel Tips and Advice for Traveling on a Budget

When booking a flight, you can almost always choose your meal at the same time. If you can't, log into the travel site or airline site and do it before you leave. Give them a call if you need to.

These days, airlines offer all kinds of meal choices, such as vegetarian, kosher, low calorie, etc. But these meals are usually not available if you just ask for it on the plane - you need to request and reserve the special meal in advance.

Another bonus to this is that usually the flight attendants will bring out these reserved meals in advance, so that they don't mix them up with the other meals. So you'll get your food before everyone else on the plane.

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).

Be sure to bring essentials with you on the plane in your carry-on luggage. This includes things like medication, eye drops, eyeglasses, motion sickness medication, etc.

It's easier if you have a smaller, separate bag for these types of essentials, so you don't have to dig through your entire carry-on bag just to find one tiny bottle of eye drops. You can keep this smaller bag under the seat in front of you for easy access.

Also pack a book, magazine, sketchbook, mp3 player, or anything else that will ward off boredom during the flight.