Since most meetings start around 09:00, travel is usually always the day before. Spend the night in a hotel, wake up fresh and ready the next day. For long-hauls, especially to Asia, I’ll at least fly out Saturday if meetings start Monday. However, since a 10-12 hour eastbound flight wrecks havoc with the body clock, I have even flown out on a Friday and spent two nights in a hotel before it’s Monday morning. For flights to North America, I usually fly out on a Saturday and have the Sunday off on location. My company is absolutely cool with that.

Flights back home are always on a Friday, which will see me arriving back late in the evening (returning from within Europe), Saturday morning/noon (returning from North America) or Saturday later afternoon/evening (Asia).

We have flex hours, meaning every minute we work more or less than 7.5 hours per day is credited or debited our account. So for a trip done on a Saturday or Sunday, the clock starts ticking when entering the airport and stops when reaching the hotel. That’s easily 12 hours for a trip across the pond, and up to around 15 for a trip to Asia. Extra hours are used to take time off, and I just spent 30 hours taking 4 days off last month. Still got around 30 hours in the account, and with an upcoming trip to North America, I need to take a few more days off lest it gets out of control. With the normal vacation allowance (6 weeks) and flex hours, I take around 10-12 weeks off every year, usually packaged into one 3-week summer vacation, two 2-week vacations and the rest in dribs and drabs. All paid, of course.