I travel domestically weekly but have a trip coming up from AVL-CLT-DFW-SYD-BNE next week. The long leg leaves DFW at 11:00 pm and arrives SYD in the morning. With 17 hours on this one leg, I'm interested in ways to 1)avoid jet lag, 2) get on SYD local time so I'm ready for work when I land. I'm seated in first on Qantas A380 so sleep should not be a problem (I'm fine with pharmaceutical help too) but trying to determine how to arrange my sleep schedule for this flight. Ideas?

If I wanted to be on Sydney time at arrival I would force staying up as long as I could on the way down. Maybe sleep the last 8-9 hours so you wake in the morning oz time. I usually allow an hour before arrival to wash my face, eat breakfast and forget about the fact that my face feels like it's being stretched around the back of head. Advil PM is my assistant.

Let's take this one step further and say you want to be awake on the plane at the 15 1/2 hour mark of the flight

So for eight hours sleep you want to go to sleep at the 7 1/2 hour mark of the flight

If it were me and it was alleviate 11 PM Pacific time

I wouldn't want to wait about 2 o'clock in the afternoon Pacific so for me that means I would have to go to bed about 6 AM the night prior so as you can see this is more than a one day task trying to prep your sleep patterns

That would mean I would be up about 16 or 17 hours by the time I try to sleep on the plane

I also use a product called No Jet Lag. Wife says it is a bunch of hooey, but it seems to work for me on my 15 TATL flights a year.

A bottle of water, or a sip of water, or pretty much anything, will contain the same concentration of the listed ingredients as a No Jet Lag tablet (or the whole package, for that matter). At 30C dilution there's no chance the product contains even a single molecule of any of the ingredients its manufacturer started with.

I recently took that flight (and just got off this afternoon's SYD-DFW flight) and I can't usually sleep worth a darn on planes. But the day I left, I was up at 6 AM as usual for work and managed to fall asleep with the help of some Tylenol PM about halfway through the flight, and think I got about 5 or 6 hours of sleep, and I was able to make it through the day in Sydney with relative ease and eventually crashed around 9 or 10 at night.

Of course, YMMV will vary, jet lag affects everyone differently. Now, if you'll excuse me, I've been up for over the past 24 hours traveling back from Oz and am about to fall asleep on my keyboarsg0hnAE)}GT8HNAgpt0]iu8zg

Try to put in a full day before you leave so that you are tired by 11PM. If you exercise, do it that day or at least try to take a long walk. Stay away from caffeine and while booze might but you to sleep it will not be a good sleep. Do something like reading rather than watching a movie on the a/c.

I just had a very similar situation. JAX CLT LAX BNE ADL KGC.

In short, I stayed up for the two domestic legs.

Flight left well after midnight EST...

Fell asleep almost immediately after takeoff for the TPAC leg. Long flight 13 hours and change...slept for all but two of those hours. Arrived 6:50 am. Didn't nap at all on day 1. Avoided alcohol (Drank caffeine!).

I wasn't jet lagged AT ALL.

That said, the way back was another story...took 4 days to get over it

The best and natural way is to mimic the local time as much as possible.

When it is 7 p.m. Eastern Time, it is 9 am in Brisbane. In early October, it will be 10 am. Daylight savings time ends 11/1 in the U.S.

In other words,
now: Eastern time 7 pm, Brisbane 9 am (Brisbane is almost like 10 hours earlier)
October: Eastern time 7 pm, Brisbane 10 am
November and later: Eastern Time 6 pm, Brisbane 10 am. (Brisbane is almost like 8 hours earlier)

Before the trip, try to get up as late as possible. If it is November and you can get up at 7:30 am that is like getting up at 11:30 pm in Brisbane.

When you are in Brisbane, sleep as early in the evening as possible. If you can swing a 6 p.m. bedtime and get up at 2 am, then the difference in jet lag is merely 2.5 hours.

More sleep is better than less. If you must nap in the middle of the day, try 30-45 minutes, no more. Then try to go to bed at normal local bedtime.

As others have said, try and adjust your sleep patterns in the days beforehand (if possible). So if you need to stay awake longer on the flight, try going to bed later (even a few hours make a difference) and getting up later (work/other stuff permitting of course).

Avoid alcohol and caffeine and stay well hydrated.

Take melatonin/some other sleep aid if you're struggling for sleep. Talk to your doctor and if you have time, try a few different options and see which one works best for you (all sleeping aids affect people differently).

Having flown TPAC plenty of times, your problem won't be DFW-SYD, it will be the way back as you'll have to force yourself to stay awake.

Yep - exactly my point. Don't worry too much Re: going THERE. Worry about coming home. Or wait..better yet...don't worry at all!!

ps, for those melatonin experts out there, I've never understood the timing behind taking the pills.

Do you take them days before your new time zone? Take them to go to bed? First few nights in new destination? Whole trip? etc..

DFW-SYD timing is great for adjusting into Australia time zone, especially in a lie flat seat. You stay up the first 5 hours of the flight then go to sleep like normal. When you wake up, hopefully after 7-8 hours sleep, it is morning in Australia and you will have a full nights sleep.

I took a similar flight, IAH-PEK on Air China, in March. 14+ hour flight. Departed IAH after midnight. I stayed up for 3-4 hours, then sleep most of the next 10 hours. Arrived PEK early morning after sleeping 7.5 hours. I had no jet lag in China.

http://www.webmd.com/brain/news/2015...placebo-effect
http://www.cbc.ca/natureofthings/epi...of-the-placebo

Sure it does. Ever heard of this thing called drug companies. If there was a pill that magically cured jet lag that wasn't a placebo, it would be patented and marketed. It's not because it doesn't exist.

Truth, I had hardly adjustment on my way to SYD. Got back 3 days ago and still feeling a bit jetlagged. Normally one nights sleep after a TATL flight and I'm good to go, but this is lingering a lot longer. I'm sure once I can sleep as late as I want Saturday I'll be fine. I hope.

The weirdest thing about the SYD-DFW flight is the flight time is equal to the time change (at least until DST). It takes off at 1 PM Sydney time, lands at 1 PM Dallas time, give or take a few minutes. It's like time just pauses while you're on the plane, but of course, your body doesn't know that, so it really messes with you.