I’ve never needed nasal sprays, but I do have a little spray bottle of rosewater nabbed from a biz-class goodiebag that I use to spritz my face during the flight, especially before landing.

It only works, they say, if you’re not already a tobacco addict.

No, I don’t remember who they are.

I fly Denver-Germany for work, Denver-Greece or South Africa or Perth (Oz) annually for family, so have practised this a lot..

With a bit of sleep and the minimal timezone change, you should be fine. I’ve always wanted to visit Buenos Aires..

I’m always conflicted about whether window or aisle seat works better. I wish I had checked the plane layout more carefully before getting a seat. If it’s just two seats then window may be okay. Otherwise, it starts to feel claustrophobic to have to bother two people to get up. So I usually opt for an aisle seat. But yes, it is really annoying to be bumped all the time.

United Premier members (which I am) get free upgrades to economy plus seats, which tend to have considerably more legroom. I consider this a must. That way, if the person in front of you leans back, you still have some room.

JR mentioned “Since you’re on the shorter side”. Is this supposed to pertain to me? I don’t consider my over 5’10 height to be on the shorter side especially since most of that is attributable to long legs (as opposed to a long torso). So no, I rarely have enough legroom. That’s partly why Economy Plus is so important. Not having luggage underneat the seat in front of mine will allow me to stretch my legs, which can be helpful.

Thanks all, some great advice here!

Odd—my experience (and my wife’s) is exactly the opposite. We get a couple of hours of sleep on the flight over and that seems to be enough to trick our bodies into counting it as a night. We have little trouble staying up until a normal European bed-time and we’re good to go with normal wake / sleep patterns. But returning, even if we manage to stay up for the whole extended-length travel day, it still takes several days to a week to stop waking up a 3 or 4 in the morning.

I do about 4 trips a year from Australia to the northern hemisphere (24 hours each way, with connections), so I spend about 2% of my time sitting on or near a 747. This strategy seems to work pretty well.

The food is lousy (sometimes tolerable in Business Class), and it keeps me awake, not to mention the two hours possible sleep lost while the serving is going on.

A window seat is better for this strategy because you won’t be bumped by the cabin crew.

As bad jim says, the eastbound pond-hop is always more draining than the westbound: in part because of the necessary scheduling to take off and land during airport opening hours, and in part because of your body clock. And, frankly, hitting Gatwick at 6am after an overnight flight is going to make anyone miserable.

I’ve learned to cope with both, though my early attempts to use melatonin on eastbound hops produced mixed results. Noise-cancelling headphones, on the other hand (or simply monitor-style ones like the Etymotic or Shure earplugs) are definitely recommended, though. And if you have an iPod, stick some binaural beat stuff on it.

I’d also suggest trying to find a place for a warm shower in DC, but I don’t know whether it’s as amenable as, say, Schiphol, which is a great overnighting airport.