What to do on long-haul flights

Noss asleep” (CC BY-SA 2.0) by Ed.ward

Long-haul flights can be daunting for anyone. Once you have bought all you wanted from the duty-free shops, have boarded the flight and it has taken off, it can seem a long, long time before your journey ends. Flying is the safest way to travel travel and also the most convenient, but it can also be quite boring. It does not have the thrill of a train journey or the fun of a bus ride. However, there are still a number of ways to make a long flight quite entertaining.

Given how busy we are with work these days and how hard many of us have to work to make ends meet, it is not always possible to read for pleasure. Of course, we can often catch a few pages here and there during our days off, but how often are we able to devote an entire afternoon or an entire day to reading just for the pure joy of it? On long-haul fights, reading is something that we should all do, or at least try to.

Of course, given that we are often tired on such long flights and small space is not always conducive to deep and heavy reading, but there is still enough scope for a light read. In between sleeps, we can always catch the latest novel from Dan Brown or the new crime thriller from Danielle Steel. For those who board such long-haul flights after a proper sleep or fresh, revisiting Bridget Jones’s Diary or a volume from the Twilight saga would be worth it, even if you have read them multiple times before.


Como perder un vuelo / As missing a flig” (CC BY-SA 2.0) by hernanpba

Watching movies is another way to while away the time on a long flight. In your long-haul flight you’re likely to get the latest releases, and you should be able to watch two or three new films during a seven or nine-hour flight. If you have yet to watch Logan, Kong: Skull Island or Beauty and the Beast, then you could get to catch them on most airlines. Many airlines let travellers access the Internet, which means that you can also play games during your flight. From MMOs like Guild Wars to first-person shooters like Call of Duty or match-3 puzzles, there’s a wide array of games to choose from. If you’re a casino game fan, you can find a wide selection of online slot machines at providers such as BitCasino. Among the many slots on offer is the popular Fire and Steel slot game. A 5-reel, 20-payline slot, it is a fantasy-themed slot that is reminiscent of Game of Thrones and has two Wilds, the Swordsman, who releases a vertical beam, and the Shieldmaiden.

Perhaps the easiest way to survive a long-haul flight is sleeping. Not many of us get to get the full eight hours at night, so it is not a bad idea to spend most of the time on long-haul flights sleeping. Not only can it make a 12-hour flight seem just a few minutes, but it also helps preparing you for the dreaded jetlag. So if you can, give your body – and mind – some much-needed rest.