Long flight, little time-zone change

At least part of the fatigue is due to dehydration from dry air (bring water), and part is noise induced fatigue. I find that having enough water and noise cancelling headphones make a small (but noticable) difference on 2+ hour flights, moderate difference on 5 hour flights, without the added effect of time zone shifts. Earplugs are as good as headphones if you find them more comfortable.

Simple headsets do not help. Masking the noise with louder music does not eliminate the fatiguing effect of continuous loud noise.

If you have trouble sleeping, I find that listening to boring lectures (like some of the scientific or technical podcasts) puts me to sleep quite effectively. It’s one of those skills you learn in college, forget that you have, and rediscover.

Get up several times during the flight, and walk around. In my experience, there’s nothing that exausts in quite the same way as enforced inactivity. And airline seating, especially coach, immobilizes you much more than normal furniture.

I’ve found that lack of sleep is the real issue. If you can get 5-6 hours of sleep on the plane, you’re probably OK.

I’ve had very little success getting people to take this advice, but the answer is: sleeping pills. Good ones, not the junk from the store. Get a prescription for Ambien or something like that (I happen to use Temazepam, a cheap generic that’s very effective). They work great, they aren’t addictive, and they completely changed my life. I suffer from virtually no jet lag anymore, regardless of whether or not there’s a time zone shift.

Take the pill 9 hours before landing. I usually have no trouble staying awake for a couple of hours after that, then dozing for 6 hours or so (an inflatable neck pillow helps too), then waking up for breakfast, ready for the day.

I’m not a pill fan and was initially reluctant to try this. But they’re harmless and work perfectly. Highly recommended in addition to all the other advice.

As Harry B suggests, physical exercise improves your odds of being able to sleep on the plane. Spend as much time as you can during the three hours in Washington being active, even just obsessively walking the airport.

The Langenscheidt Lilliput dictionaries are about 1 x 1.5 inches. They’re $3.75 apiece (one is English- Spanish, the other is guess what). People in Spain loved them as thank-you presents or tips.

Anxiety from flying always leaves me frazzled, so I don’t fight the urge and immediately take a nap of a couple hours upon arrival. Sometimes it’s better to take a quick nap than to be tired all day long. Wake up with coffee, and you’re reset.

You might want to try the Sennheiser HD 280 Pro noise redcution headphones
Link

Kevin is right- the modern prescription sleeping meds work very well. I’ve used Ambien for 10 hour flights (to get 6 hours of sleep) and Trazadone for 14 hour flights (to get 8 hours of sleep).

Do not skip too much sleep the night before: sleep loss is cumulative.

Don’t use over-the-counter pills unless you know they work really, really well for you. I’ve tried them and just ended up groggy for a flight: too tired to read, too awake to sleep.

Neil: This is just my experience, but even with a sleeping pill I doze more than really sleep. I seem to sleep in three or four chunks of an hour or 90 minutes each, and wiggle around a bit each time I wake up. So my guess is that DVT isn’t an issue. But the brief awakenings don’t really affect the quality of the sleep much. It still adds up to 5-6 hours, which is enough to let me get through the next day pretty well.

(This is just a guess, though. Obviously you should ask a doctor if it’s a real worry.)

I once took a 13 hour overnight flight from London to Buenos Aires, didn’t sleep much on the flight, but didn’t have any problem adjusting. I was a bit sleepy my first day in Buenos Aires but didn’t have a problem falling asleep at the normal time that night, as the time difference between London and Buenos Aires isn’t that great.

I found the flights to and from Buenos Aires much less disruptive than the 11 hour flights I regularly take between London and Los Angeles, which involve the crossing of twice as many time zones.

Traveling west, whether Europe to U.S. or U.S. to Japan, is no particular problem. For most of us it’s easy to fit an extra ten hours in a day, especially when the sun keeps shining.

Going east is a bit harder; it helps to go to sleep earlier than one would ordinarily. I’ve used small amounts of alcohol with meals to trick myself into drowsing, with limited success. Sleeping in economy is a trick I’ve yet to master consistently.

By all means get out and about when you arrive, walk around while the sun shines, observe the sunset and adopt the local schedule immediately. I’d bet that Buenos Aires observes Spanish customs (like Brazilians): late openings, a long lunch and dinner at 9. You may want to pass on the dancing until dawn.

Excellent advice here, one other thing to add (maybe too obvious to mention): get an aisle seat.

Also I’d like to reiterate what cr said. If you can spare a day definitely take the ferry across to Colonia. It is quick, cheap and easy to get across and the old town and beaches are beautiful.

Is it the long trip, the time-zone change or a combination of the two that causes one to be completely useless after a trip from the U.S. to Europe?

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.

Go for a run the day you’re due to fly out. On the plane, drink lots of water, don’t drink as much alcohol as you’re tempted to, and sleep as much as you can. When you get there, take a tablet or two of melatonin at 10pm local time (it helps reset the body clock).

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.

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.

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 don’t know from personal experience, but they say a cigarette in the morning will reset one’s body clock and defeat jet lag.

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

No, I don’t remember who they are.

slocum: that’s interesting, because I don’t know of many people who are suffer more from westbound flights. That might be the power of anecdote, but when you gain five hours on an eight-hour flight that leaves in the morning or early afternoon, the general effect is just that you have a ‘long night’ and hit the next day running. Do you fly from the east coast or further west?

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.