On World Sleep Day, 10 tips for how to sleep better on a long-haul flight

The reasons people can’t sleep well on a flight are legion, and some of them are less obvious than others. As much as possible, you want to recreate the same environment that you experience when you sleep in your own bed. Not easy, but the closer you get the better you’ll sleep. Here are 10 sleep killers and how you can defeat them.

Noise

Wind and engine noise create stress and are anathema to sleep. At home, unless you live near an airport you don’t listen to roaring jet engines while you’re trying to get some sleep, so block out as much as you can when you fly.

Tip: Bring and wear earplugs (either silicone or foam with a decibel reduction rating of 30 or more). They won’t block out all the noise but enough to make a difference. Unless you sleep on your side, put a pair of Bose noise-cancelling earphones on top of the earplugs (don’t play music, just turn them on). Flying on a quieter plane helps, too. Airbus A380s fly much quieter, for example, than some other, older models.

Light

Even when all the window shades are down (and there’s always someone who throws one up in the middle of the day/night) we now have those seat-back video screens throwing off light all night long along with those lighted signs in the cabin.

Tip: Wear eyeshades. When I fly at night, I see very few people wearing them. No wonder they can’t sleep. They hand them out in some amenity kits on international flights, even in economy class, but they’re not great quality so buy and carry your own (Tempur-Pedic makes a great one) or grab one from an amenity kit in first and business next time you pass through at the end of a flight.

Turbulence

How many times have I been deep in sleep on a plane and dreamt that I was in an earthquake only to wake up and find that it was air turbulence? More than I care to recall.