Image by Lars Plougmann used under Creative Commons License
Travelling is a great way to travel to far flung locations making the world a much smaller place. It isn't always fun or convenient though. I've spent thousands of hours trapped inside a trans-atlantic or trans-pacific flight wishing for it to finally be over.
There are some tips that will help make you flight just a little and more enjoyable.
1 - Fly early and sit on the wing
I am not prone to motion sickness but I know plenty of colleagues who are. As the sun rises and heats the ground, the ground radiates that heat back into the sky potentially causing more turbulence. Flying earlier in the day means the ground may be less hot and you may experience less turbulence.
In line with the theme of motion sickness, try to reserve a seat on the wing. These are the seats with the least amount of tilting when the plane turns.
2 - Use carry-on only
Talking to frequent travellers, one of the most common complaints is related to checked luggage. Complaints are caused either long line-ups to drop it off at check-in, luggage being delayed due to routing issues, luggage being damaged during transit, luggage contents being stolen or having to wait over an hour to pick up your luggage at the destination airport.
If you can, fly carry-on only.
3 - Bring extra power
When travelling with electronics (Kindle, iPad, Nexus, iPhone) you want to make sure these device are able to entertain you during the entire trip. Make sure you travel with your own external battery pack (Link).
4 - Buy cheaper tickets
Read older blog posts and you will likely see advice recommending that you purchase your airline tickets on Tuesday. This advice no longer holds as more recent analysis shows that Sundays offer the best deals (Link).
Airlines Reporting Corp (a ticket processor transacting about half of all tickets sold) conducted a 19 month (130 million ticket analysis) and showed that Sundays offered the lowest prices. The second cheapest day was Saturday (with a rate of about $10 more per ticket). Tuesday was found to be almost $60 more expensive.
Historical data has shows Tuesdays having the most price drops so it may still be worth keeping an eye out for deals on that day. Yapta, a site that alerts corporate travel managers to price drops, confirmed that it saw 21% of its ticket price drops on Tuesday followed by 19% on Wednesday.