How to Survive a Long-Haul Flight
With Someone Who Can't

25 March 2017 | Mri Grout - A Lifelong Vagabond

We have all flown with ‘that someone’ before, whether he (or she) was in our traveling party or a random baby a few rows over. If it’s only ever the latter, then you can enjoy the rest of this article thinking the extremity of it is nothing but a joke - never knowing the true ordeal of having to travel a longhaul flight with someone who can’t. However, if you find yourself trapped longhaul flight after longhaul flight with ‘that someone’ because they’re just too great to ditch entirely, then read on and hopefully you too, can learn how to survive a longhaul flight with someone who can’t.

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1. Secretly Buy Different Seats

This is especially easy if you’re normally the one who arranges the flights anyway. If not though, simply offer to do them this time so that your travel buddy may relax and focus on discovering more awesome things for you guys to do together because you just love the things they find. Make sure the persuasion/flattery is thick enough to get what you want but not too thick to gain suspicion. Then just ‘accidentally’ book separate seats online and viola! A long-haul flight you can actually enjoy.

2. Buy Different Plane Tickets Entirely

small airplane showing at the Port Cook Raaf Museum

If being a few rows over from that someone isn’t enough for you to be able to relax (or if he (or she) successfully manages to get the person who is supposed to be beside you to swap...), then just go all out and buy different plane tickets entirely. Now this is going to be a bit trickier as you have to make sure your’s is a following flight with the same airline. Otherwise they’re going to know something is up when you say, queue for Emirates and they Thomas Cook. If it’s earlier than their flight, they might panic at not being allowed on the plane they believed they were supposed to be on and then never join you for that trip you guys planned (oh no!).

3. Take Some Knock-Out Sleeping Pills

These are for you not ‘that someone’ so make sure you buy some really good ones that he (or she) can’t wake you from. The strength of them will be a fine balance though since you also need to make sure that if (when?) the plane is about to crash, you can still be woken up by the flight crew to enjoy the screaming panic of your final moments. Because your inevitable death is totally worth being awake for.

4. Lock Yourself in the Toilet

Now this will probably bring you a lot of ire from all of the other passengers given the number of toilets available is already pretty thin. However, your utter sanity is at stake, so you do what you have to do to survive the long-haul flight. I’m sure if you just shouted this over all of the yells and curses to come out already, they’d totally understand.

5. Book Them the Window Seat

When all else fails, you just have to do something completely, utterly, and heartbraking insane. Sucks, I know. But giving up the window seat won’t suck more than gouging your eyes out with those plastic spoons you get for lunch because you’ve finally hit your breaking point.

Probably.

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