After 1.5 million lifetime miles, much of it intercontinental, it boils down to 2 rules for me:
- Flying East to Europe: Get out in the sun after landing and don't fall asleep until at least 8:00 PM local time.
- Flying West to Asia: Stay on US time. Go to sleep at 6:00 PM local time, get up at 2:00 AM. Obviously, avoid evening appointments. If that isn't possible, at least schedule them after you've been in country a couple of days.
My personal rule is simpler: always land in the evening local time. I'm always tired after a flight, so regardless of what time it feels like, I can usually sleep a full night. So I fly, land, sleep, wake up and am pretty much on local time. That being said this doesn't work at all for my girlfriend, so YMMV.
It doesn't work for large jet lags. When I go from EU to West Coast the toll on me is very high, whereas when I go to NYC I can adapt in two to three days.
Again, it doesn't work the same way for everyone, but I've actually been from NYC to Hong Kong several times and always land at night both times. I am usually slightly tired the next day, but nowhere near as bad as landing at 7 AM would make me.
I once flew to Japan from SFO. I took 2 Dramamine an hour before take off. When I got on the plane I was drowsy. I asked for a blanket and remember the take off but nothing more. I woke up an hour or so before landing and it was 6am in Narita. The most amazing experience flying I've ever had.
I did that flight to Haneda last year. Slept most of the way there. Had a bit of caffeine and generally kept mobilising. I was in Tokyo time on Day 2. Fantastic flight.
Not watching your total but I have done a couple 200k BIS years...
Mine is simpler. Once I get to the airport, I act as if I am on destination time. I plan flights around that, try and get overnight flights so I can sleep, land in the morning, and just have a full day. If I am on a daytime flight...have to stay up and stay active
I try to do the same thing, except I'm continually fighting flight attendants that insist all the cabin windows be closed and dark for the entire span of the flight, so they can then flip the cabin into full blasting sun and overhead light 90 minutes before landing when the breakfast service begins. I shoot for a window seat and try to crack my shade a bit, just so I can get morning sunrise light as we cross over.
I realize this darkness is what the majority of the passengers want on their eastbound transatlantic flights, and I'm sure the crew wants the passengers asleep and inert over the 4-5 hours, but IMO that just generates more jet lag than less. They want their sleep NOW even if it means screwing up their sleep for the next 2-3 days.
That type of stuff just drives me nuts...I do understand it but just the shear dormitory like treatment from (mostly US) carriers on international flights is beyond frustrating to me.
Small adjustment: flying East on a long flight, you should sleep 4-5 hours during night-time, which will happen naturally on the plane. That will make you want to go sleep earlier that day when you land, but also make you functional until then.
The difficulty is flying Westward. You're going to turn into an early bird for a while. Since you're going to sleep hours later than usual, you should take a nap during the day, as you would do locally if you had to stay up on New Year's Eve for example. Then you "crash" as late as possible and you wake up on normal time.
Think of it as switching from being an early bird to a night owl locally, and vice versa.
i have a similar routine with a sprinkle of melatonine. i found that melatonine makes all the difference, but i also heard that it doesn't work at all for some people.
In addition to shifting my schedule and getting sun in the destination, I've found melatonin to be extremely helpful in reducing jet lag. When flying to Asia, I start taking 5mg the evening before I fly and try to go to bed early. In both Europe and Asia I take it for the first few nights.
after traveling to London (from Boston) every third sunday night for two and half years (arriving heathrow at ~6am, shower at airport and arrive at work for first meeting), I still could not handle meetings after 3pm (London) on monday -- tuesdays I was right as rain, but i needed a nap at 3pm if I had to be active that night.
The flights home were much easier -- arrive thursday evening, dinner and go to sleep.
rules: don't drink on flights you need to sleep, eat before you get on the plane (eating on the flight is a waste of time)
melatonin is your friend.
I found that on flying East to Asia, I didn't have a choice but to go to sleep around 5-6-7 and wake up at 2AM. Mind and body simply shut down, especially after a ~13h flight.
Yes, I don't have a choice. My body wakes me up at 2:00 because it is past my normal wake up time in my home time zone. I've tried going back to sleep, but wind up just lying in bed awake.
That happened to me on my last trip to Europe. Both my wife and I woke up every night at 2:10am for the first few days. The precision of it was crazy. However, we would take a few ambient and be right back asleep and feeling great the next day. Amazing what twelve hours of sleep can do!
It's only mildly awkward to go to bed at 6pm, and then when you fly back east, you don't have much jetlag in that direction either. 2am in China is 11am in SF.
(I'm assuming the OP is flying from the US, based on the destination choices.)
Yes, also the offsets are wrong. China (East coast time right now is 9 hr diff from West coast usa. After daylight ends it's another hr diff. It is never a 6 hr diff.
This "16.7M colours" stat that reporters wave around always gets me. It's just 24-bit color, doesn't mean it's "high tech". I can make you 16.7M colours with a $3 microcontroller and LEDs from the hardware store.
What they should discuss instead is the color gamut of the LEDs and how much of the visible light spectrum they can accurately reproduce.
They aren't writing the article for technologists and color-gamut-philes. If anything, they're writing it for people who fly long-haul and consequently suffer from jet lag when they have actual business to conduct.
Talking about the number of colors the LEDs can produce is far more likely to convey to that audience how this is supposed to work than delving into the kind of details you'd probably have to read the spec sheet on the individual diodes to find.
Boeings 787s and "new cabin" 778 retrofits have this feature. It was touted by AA and United a while back. When i actually flew in one, flight attendants made zero use of it and just went from 100% bright to to regular "lights off, good night" as soon as meal service was done.
Seriously, the cabin climate changes on Dreamliners make 10-hour flights feel more like 6-hour flights to me, in terms of how useless I am at remembering my name and why I'm visiting upon reaching the immigration counter in the destination country.
I thought A380 and 787 had equivalent cabin pressure of 6000 ft with similar humidity features.
That said, I unfortunately did not notice any reduction in tiredness or jet lag in either plane compared to older aircraft. But I did enjoy the lower noise levels and higher stability of the A380, which make for a more pleasant journey overall. I feel less worn off when I land, which means I'll take less to recover from the flight itself, which I find more damaging then the time zone differences.
I second the pressurisation and humidity features. Also, they use electric compressors instead of bleed air, which helps to reduce engine fumes in cabin.
The staff doesn't care if you get jet lag. They turn off the lights for as much of the flight as possible so that people go to sleep, or at least stay quiet. Less work for them!
Perhaps I'm saying this because I only experienced jet lag on holidays but I love it. I flew several times from Europe to Asia. I couldn't get much sleep on the plane and was very tired so managed to sleep easily and the next days were a bit hazy but fun.
On the way back it's the best part. I always end up going to bed early and waking up early. I love it. I normally can't sleep that easily or wake up so fresh early in the morning. I feel very productive working in the early hours of the morning (only on jet lag). Maybe I'm odd, but I wish I could stretch my jet lag even further, rather than get rid of it.
> I only experienced jet lag on holidays but I love it
I feel the same on slight sleep deprivation: if you usually get a good night's sleep and one day wake up after 3/4 hours, after the groggy phase you'd feel in a positive, relaxed mood, probably not top notch mentally but it's very similar to having drunk a small amount of alcohol. I really enjoy it.
It doesn't work if you are already sleep deprived.
Hah, I felt the same returning to US from Europe. For a week I was waking up at 5am and going to watch the sunrise for the first time ever. It was amazing, I wish I could always do that.
I recently flew the Dreamliner to Australia and experienced no jet lag. Noticeable difference.
I like flying from Canada to Europe because when I arrive, I'm primed to be able to party until 4:00 or 5:00 am, like the locals. Whereas back home, I'm so used to going to bed at 11 and getting up at 6, it takes a lot of effort to stay up late. This kind of jet lag helps me relive my twenties, and since I'm never there on business, always just pleasure, it works out very well.
My first work flight to Europe (about 30 years ago) I was upgraded to first class upon getting on the plane. First class at that time was in the nose of the 747. Business class was on the 2nd level. I walked into the nose and found that I was the only one there. Because the nose is basically a triangle, one of the results is that one seat is isolated all by itself. I choose that seat and thought "cool, I'll be like Captain Kirk on the bridge". Being young (~21) and inexperienced, jet lag was not on my mind - I was looking forward to my time as Captain Kirk.
A few other passengers can onto the "bridge" and the a stewardess came in and asked me if I'd like a drink. I had about two drinks before passing out. I slept all the way to Europe and was somewhat miffed at myself. But upon arrival I found that I did not experience any jet lag. Over a year I did the same trip a couple more times, was not so fortunate to be placed on the bridge, get free drinks, and be comfortable. On those trips I did experience jet lag.
I do UK to Australia every other year. I started in my early twenties and am now mid thirties. I've found jetlag has gotten worse as I've got older. I hardly felt it when I was 21! I'd say it takes about three days to be sleeping ok again now. My parents always take at least a week to recover.
Except this time. I had a six month old baby and jetlag felt completely the same as just being at home. :)
Definitely agree on the age thing... I've just turned 60 and it takes me days to get fully recovered from flying LN-NY, much longer than it used to. Melatonin and adjusting sleep times helps a bit, but not as much as I'd wish.
Not being able to sleep on planes doesn't help either. On the overnight flight back to LN, I'm the one with the reading light on all night...
Jetlag definitely does get worse with age.
Totally concur on the comparison to a six month old. My daughter taught me patience and perseverance - from birth until present. I know some day she will return the favor.
We always found getting blind drunk worked best. Get plastered then go to sleep at about midnight, wake up at 10am local time with a stinking hangover but body clock in sync.
2-3 non-sugary drinks plus a melatonin (which i never take regularly) work wonders. Bring good earplugs - the soft, squishy kind. And of course, try to get that business upgrade - i found the latter to work the most :)
You don't need much and a lot of the OTC pills are way too much and cause that odd sleep. Iirc Some pills are 50mg of the stuff and you only need ~1mg to get useful effects. Any more and you risk bad dreams and other weird effects.
Yes, I've been to a sleep specialist and they told me the same thing. Anything over 1mg is far too much. And you really have to look to find the 1mg bottles.
I'm currently using a combination of Jetlag Rooster (http://www.jetlagrooster.com/), fasting, drinking lots of water and eating the first meal after arrival with their time (if you arrive at 9am, you'd eat breakfast there) - this has worked very good for both me and multiple people I've recommended it to.
I.be seen studies, and found it works well for me, that the ideal is to only eat once a day, at diner time of your destination. I don't always manage to do it during travel but do it for 2 or 3 days once I've arrived.
Interesting. There is clear animal data showing that food timing is a strong input to ththe circadian clock, I hadn't seen it applied to people before.
The problem with travel hacking (it's not really economically feasible to fly business between Europe and US for most of us) is that you get so used to it that every single transatlantic work trip becomes a big complicated optimization game. Flying economy simple stops being an option.
This time the other day I lucked out via what seemed to be a Star Alliance-wide mistake fare between Scandinavia and Seattle and a few more US cities ($700 for r/t business class!). That plus a cheap connecting flight to the Bay area fixed it for this time.
How do you find these fares and connections? Seems like a non-trivial amount of work to look at every possible route combination between two cities. I do Lisbon-SF twice a month and would gladly upgrade to business at 2x cost of economy.
Flyertalk, businessclass.{se,no,dk,co.uk}, insideflyer.de, onemileatatime.boardingarea.com etc etc.
Plus personal crawler projects and contacts with similar-minded people.
Warning: if you don't find this fun it's probably not worth the time. Expect to spend a lot of time chasing these deals.
It does seem to get harder over time, judging from my ~5 years in the game. Just a few years ago there were gaping holes in the system, allowing anyone to buy 100k miles from US Airways for $1200 and then spend them on quite on e.g. a 90k mile (or was it 110k?) First class roundtrips Europe/NA-Asia with e.g. ANA, Asiana iirc.
By the way, for your situation - I am not very familiar with good routes out of Portugal/Spain - but Norwegian's normal paid premium fares out of Oslo/Stockholm/London to Oakland have been a decent fallback for me for when I can't find a decent "hacked trip". It may work for you via a connection to/from e.g. London.
Pro:
- Decent almost business class for $1400 USD roundtrip
- You can buy single trips for 50% of the roundtrip cost
Con:
- Their irregular ops handling is disastrous. They use a small fleet of 787s for transatlantic flights, with zero spare capacity, so when a plane breaks somehow you basically have to wait for them to repair it. For that reason I avoid them on trips into the US (for planned meetings there) but sometimes use them on the way back.
Thanks! My regular route is Lisbon -> Amsterdam -> San Francisco with KLM. It's 5 am flight with a 50 minute connection in AMS, but Schiphol is a wonderful airport, the dutch very helpful, and I quite like the old airplanes they use on this route. I can usually find a ticket for $700, too.
This sounds like "Just pay three thousand dollars per flight and problem solved!"
Plus, business class only helps you avoid jet lag on certain itineraries. Sometimes due to timing, sometimes due to crappy business class on some shorter flights or less luxurious airlines.
It's like if someone suggested how to improve public transportation and you answered "I found the best improvement - just take a cab everywhere."
Re: local transportation: What if it ends up being an improvement of the transportation market, to the point all middle class people can afford to pay for a ride in a car when you really need it? Virgin Atlantic started off with Richard Branson chartering planes across the Atlantic.
How could one disrupt transatlantic travel in a different way?
> It's like if someone suggested how to improve public transportation and you answered "I found the best improvement - just take a cab everywhere."
I think you mean the experience of public transportation, in which case, air travel is public transportation and buying 1st class tickets does improve it. Cabs are private transport and wouldn't be a solution to that specific problem.
But this is hackernews - the demographic is highly paid silicon valley workers. If you're making 250k-500k a year, then a few thousand dollars whenever you do a transcontinental flight is a reasonable luxury. It is just a few weeks rent, after all.
There are lots of people here who don't meet that description. Please don't make us feel unwelcome. There is plenty of room for a sub thread for solutions for people without business class budgets. Don't read it if you don't need it.
With Virtual Reality in mind I feel that I should mention that people have noticed that VR can mess with peoples day and night cycle perception.
When I listen to audio books I often use my D2 Oculus rift VR headseat and explore like a tourist cool looking custom minecraft maps with the MineCrift mod, I have experiences some confusion after being in a day time VR world and taking off the VR headseat and seeing that it is night time in real life, and the opposite with night time VR scenes at day time IRL.
The ability of high quality VR to mess with the visual senses of people is really powerfull and not restricted to entertainment.
one of the things that make you feel tired after long flights is noise pollution. we don't realize it because it's something we expect during flights but our mind and body is essentially sitting through hours of loud humming that takes a toll on us.
The solution for me is good noise canceling headphones. If you fly often, invest in a good pair and it will do wonders for you. It has for me.
Doesn't the new Boeing have this feature as well? I remember hearing about it when I toured the factory. (Which if an excellent tour you should check out if you're in Seattle area.)
I flew on one from Oakland to Stockholm (return) last week. It worked great. The windows are kind amazing - they tint themselves according to conditions. The big disadvantage on the way over northern Greenland was that I couldn't see properly out the window, when there were beautiful clear skies. I always love seeing the vast open expanses and glacial valleys on Greenland.
I was so disappointed by those electronically dimmable windows in the 787.
When it's automatically controlled by the central system/crew it's fine, but when you want to manipulate them yourself the ~30 second delay from button press to actual change is quite annoying, and you wish for the old style mechanical sliders instead.
Wikipedia has 777 on order, so I guess it's not a typo. Two others sources give 764 [1] and 780 [2] orders, respectively.
Given that Air France recently converted outstanding orders for the A380 to three A350, that would make 777 as of last month consistent with 780 as of today.
This 780 figure is also including two orders for a total of 16 A350-800, which will never be built. So it is consistent with the 764 figure that do not include these A350-800.
Since this came up in a course recently, apparently jet lag is (at least partially) caused by:
1. Your circadian rhythm [1] being out of sync. In a nutshell, a reasonable amount of internal biology is synchronized to the time of day to improve efficiency. If your activity isn't in sync with what your 'internal clock' is expecting, you experience jet lag.
2. A limited ability for the clock to adjust to a new timezone. The direction of adjustment is encoded by a phase response curve [2] and is affected by exposure to light -- practically nothing else can shift it.
11thEarlOfMar has the right idea -- if you can avoid light exposure entirely, your clock won't shift and you won't be jetlagged. Otherwise, large doses of light at the right times of day are (apparently) the best cure.
Here's [1] what appears to be a good one (or, at least, it has some citations to other papers which might be better) -- the first section after the abstract is an intro to circadian rhythms, including references to food zeitgebers in rats, rabbits and adorable hamsters. IIRC there doesn't appear to be a strong effect in humans, but I'm slacking off as is and won't be digging up a reference for that XD
This is airbus's attempt to come up with hype to fight the real advantages of the 787, 350 and CRFP - most notably greater pressure and higher humidity. I'm in a much better state coming off a 787 in economy plus then a 380 in business (assuming that I don't sleep on both). Boeing introduced the lights on their sky interior a few years ago, and it didn't really make a difference.
Interesting, didnt know why I felt like shit on a 380 after a 12h flight. Had a terrible headache and a sore throat. Is sitting at the first floor even worse? It was also very cold but not sure if related. Boeing felt a bit different (better) over the same distance but I thought it was just me
If this works, then why does jet lag often persist for days after arriving at your destination? The light is obviously in sync with local time there, but it still takes a few days for your body to adjust.
TLDR; It doesn't fix jetlag but it might get you started on the right path one "day" cycle sooner.
There isn't "one simple trick" and not have jet lag. Everyone will have jetlag after going through a large time change. Your body can only accomodate so quickly depending on the magnitude of the change. IME people recover 0.5-2 hours of time change a day. So if you go through a change, it will take anywhere from 3-12 days to fully recover. You don't even realize it until you've been somewhere for a while and one day you wake up and realize you are fully rested for the first time in a week (even though the other days felt basically fine).
To combat jet lag, try drinking a ton of water. I'm talking liters of water, I usually will consume a minimum of 3 liters of water while flying, in addition to water I drink before and after the flight. I also take at least 200mg of CoQ10/Ubiquinol each hour of the flight, in addition to extra before and after the flight. It seems to help a lot.
This might work on short flights, but short flights generally don't give us serious jet lag.
On long flights (e.g. London to San Francisco), I don't think any amount of fancy lighting will be able to compensate for the fact that your day has suddenly become 32 hours long and you've been awake for 24 of them.
Do you suddenly feel refreshed if you see another sunrise (whether real or simulated) after having been awake for 24 hours straight? Not me... at least not since my early 20s.
Jet lag isn't about feeling tired after being awake for 24 hours straight, and defeating it wouldn't mean that you arrive at your destination wide awake despite having had no sleep for a full day. Jet lag is the persistent desync between your body's internal clock and the sun's actual position, which lasts for several days after a rapid trip across many time zones. It's not about getting to your destination feeling refreshed, but waking up the next morning without feeling like it's time for bed.
Hmm - having mucked about with a variety of lighting it's only seems mildly effective for reducing jet lag. The article says they are fitting fancy coloured leds that they hope will help, not as far as I can see that they've actually tried it and found it effective. I find melatonin and ambien reduce the jet lag effects about 50% but that's a fair bit more hard core than some LEDs.
I take a small (0.2-0.4mg) dose of melatonin about 5 hours before the time I want to 'get sleepy' when travelling or returning. After a day or two of doing this, as well as getting plenty of daytime sunshine, I'm usually adjusted well enough not to notice any jet lag.
>Throw in an air management system that renews the air every two minutes while helping regulate cabin temperature, and sitting onboard an A350 may be less harsh on your body than hanging out at home.
Even taking into account the extra radiation exposure?
seems like this would work out well except for every flight i've been on there has been at least one person unwilling to close their damn window shade.
- Flying East to Europe: Get out in the sun after landing and don't fall asleep until at least 8:00 PM local time.
- Flying West to Asia: Stay on US time. Go to sleep at 6:00 PM local time, get up at 2:00 AM. Obviously, avoid evening appointments. If that isn't possible, at least schedule them after you've been in country a couple of days.