Thanks for the quick reply. I have had limited success with blow-up pillows. Basically I find them tolerable for about 6-8 hours. Anything longer than that, and I just want a real pillow. On my last 2 hour flight on WN, I saw a teenager carrying her own normal-sized pillow. My first thought was, "How tacky." After I thought about it, I thought, "You know, she may be on to something." While I wouldn't do it for a little puddle-jumper flight like she did, the idea merits consideration for a longer flight. We've got a 15 hour flight coming up and I'm thinking it may be the way to go.

I'm also allergic to feathers and that can present a problem while traveling, even when staying in good hotels. Hypo-allergenic does not always translate well. Good quality hypo-allergenic will often feel like feathers to the touch and you can't always tell what's what by feel. Many times tags are long gone. The only way I can "tell" the difference is if I wake up in the middle of the night choking and covered in hives--that's usually a dead giveaway that the hypoallergenic pillow really wasn't! I've spent many nights in beautiful hotels sleeping on a couple of towels folded up and covered in one of my tshirts trying to masquerade as a pillow. So, I'm thinking bringing my own pillow may fix two problems.

What I'm trying to figure out is, other than looking like an idiot (and I'm completely ok with that), do you think I can get away with bringing a pillow onboard as a carryon? I tooled around on a couple of airline websites and didn't find anything (not that I expected to).