Your Hints for overnight sleeping
 

For the first time, we'll be in business class for a 16 hour flight to and from IAD/HKG. Glad to have a flat bed arrangement, but no sure what to expect, plan or bring to, hopefully, get some sleep. I've read here that CX doesn't provide pj's......so I assume we bring some to sleep in, for me, something to put me to sleep (in addition to vodka), socks/slippers? to go to washroom, etc. Well, you get my drift...........hints, recommendations, no-no's would be greatly appreciated!

There is no one strategy ...
If you tried a search "sleep strategy" or similar you'd find myriad threads on this topic ... a very small sample:
https://www.flyertalk.com/forum/trav...solidated.html
https://www.flyertalk.com/forum/trav...t-routine.html
https://www.flyertalk.com/forum/trav...er-jetlag.html
https://www.flyertalk.com/forum/trav...g-flights.html
https://www.flyertalk.com/forum/trav...-medicine.html

Thanks a million, UAPrem, just what I was looking for!!

I try and put in a hard workout - usually a long run - before any overnight long haul flight. That helps me get to sleep.

Staying asleep is another matter.
- Wear comfortable and cool clothes (many airlines inexplicably turn the heat up at night so it becomes uncomfortably hot). I wear loose shorts and a thin t-shirt.
- Avoid excess alcohol - seriously. It will dehydrate you and although you may drift off to sleep faster you will wake up earlier and feel terrible.
- Noise can also be a problem and I haven't found a good solution. I can't sleep with any kind of plug or covering in or on my ears. For shorter flights, (6-8 hours) I also skip the meal and go straight to sleep but in your case you can enjoy a nice meal, have a glass of wine, watch a movie and still have plenty of time for a good sleep.

Hope you have a great and non-turbulent flight!

Depending on how you react to alcohol, you might want to avoid it period. For me, alcohol dilates my blood vessels, making me feel very hot. Add a warm cabin into the mix and you'll be too hot to sleep comfortably. You'll be closer to the floor when lying flat than when sitting up, so whatever little airflow you get out of the vents (that is, if the aircraft has them) will be even less effective. Any sedative effect of alcohol is outweighed by the fact that you'll be very uncomfortable.

For my longhaul flights from YVR-HKG I usually take 2 melatonin's right after the dinner service and I usually end up waking up with about 2-3 hours left on the flight. Although I'm usually taking CX889 so I make sure I tire myself out the day before.

It's a good question although not Cathay specific.

I have done longhaul overnight flights regularly for the past 4 years and have worked out my sleeping routine fairly well. It's all fairly commonsense:

• Choose flights that have a clear 6-8 hours in the air at a time when you will be really tired (i.e. from midnight local time). Don't include the first 30 minutes after takeoff or the last 30 minutes on descent. I love flights that depart just before midnight.
• Have a busy day before and don't drink too much caffeine during the day.
• I avoid melatonin, I don't like the quality of the sleep I get and if you can't sleep it leaves you in this weird drowsy state. I've read antihistimines are better but haven't tried them.
• A little alcohol is okay but not too much, it makes me uncomfortably warm, also any hangover would be multiplied.
• Hydrate - but also go to the bathroom before you sleep so your bladder won't wake you in the night.
• If the meal would cut into your sleeping time, just eat before the flight in the lounge and skip the meal. The food in the lounge is better anyway.
• Bring pyjamas. I hate sleeping in clothes, for some reason my legs always sweat.
• If it is a short flight, I change into my PJs before takeoff, that way I can put my bed flat and go to sleep before the seatbelt sign goes off. My PJs are enougn like clothes that if we aborted takeoff and had to return to the gate I could swing it.
• Practice sleeping with a mask and earplugs. You just have to get used to it.

Even with all this, sometimes you just can't sleep. It's hard to drift off even in mild turbulence. Sometimes you're just not tired. If you lie there for a while and just can't sleep, don't panic, just stop trying for half an hour, read a book or something, and then give it another go.

I usually fly SFO to HKG leaving just after midnight, and my strategy is to stay awake as long as possible. If I can stay up for 3-4 hours, I'm usually so exhausted that then I'll sleep for 7+ hours and then I only have a few hours to kill watching movies-- sometimes I'll take a little nap before landing. Arriving at HKG at 6am, that's just about perfect. Happy flying!

I sometimes take a melatonin supplement for sleep on those super long US-Asia flights, it knocks me right out. YMMV

Precisely why I absolutely try my best to avoid these overnight USA - HKG flights. Let's say CX 845 with block time of around 16 hours. Suppose you stay up for 3-4 hours by eating the whole meal slowly until 5am Eastern. That's still 5pm in HKG which is way too early even if you manage to sleep 10 hours straight. Having breakfast at 2/3am is really not my thing (and you can't avoid it especially in J when they turn all the lights on at 2:30am).

This is why I LOVE my home port 807 flight (similarly, CX 885, CX 879, CX 831, CX 825, CX 837, CX 841 maybe). Board and eat. Food coma or fall asleep whatever due to the constant motion, but you won't last long. Effectively an extended afternoon nap. Then when you wake up it's around late morning/early afternoon HKG time, you can 'enjoy' the flight for a long time if in J/F. Land in HKG in the evening and get tired when you reach hotel/home. A perfect reset. But then probably negates the need for a perfect sleep which is the forte of F...

Big fan of melatonin. I always pop one on my long haul J flights to USA.

Just beware that everyone reacts differently to melatonin. For me, while on melatonin, I either sleep very well, but not reach REM sleep, or I reach REM sleep, but have very strange dreams that keep waking me up. Not nightmares, but dreams where my brain realizes things don't add up and wakes me up.

Going west I change to the local time even though that means staying up to 8 a.m. or 9 a.m. on a flight that leaves 1:40 a.m. here. So landing at 5:00 a.m. is sort of like it's 5:00 a.m.
Going east it's harder to do since leaving HKG at 10:30 a.m. means leaving home last night at 10:30 p.m. so either stay up late or get up super early. Actually in HKG it's not that hard to stay up all night.
In both cases Triazolam an hour before sleeping works wonders.
You won't become dependent, it's designed for that purpose and really helps defeat weird internal clock rhythms.

I've tried triazolam once but for whatever reason it didn't work. So I was left in a sort of drowsy state for the rest of the flight. Personally I wouldn't recommend taking anything you don't normally take.
My biggest mistake by far was eating in the lounge about 2 hours before my flight. Then having a 4 course meal onboard and immediately trying to sleep. My heart was pounding and i felt uncuncomfortably full till morning.
Better to eat too little and get a mid flight snack than be too full in my opinion

My preferred way to handle jet lag when traveling to Asia is to take an early morning flight ex-US (e.g. CX 841, ANA 1, etc.) departing at ~10-11:00am.

I will typically take a short nap in the afternoon before the flight and then drink a cup of coffee at around 8:00pm in the evening and start adjusting to Asia time. I'll then stay up all night and go to sleep shortly after takeoff -- which would be my normal bedtime at the destination. I've had almost zero jet lag using this method, although staying up all night before flight is not exactly pleasant. Of course, it helps that CX has by far the most comfortable bed in the sky. I stay very well-hydrated and avoid drinking too much alcohol (other than the pre-departure glass of champagne). And I've never had to use any sleep aids because I'm exhausted by the time we reach cruising altitude.

Ex-Asia is a different story. I always seem to get pretty bad jet lag regardless of the schedule.