on the road less travelled in Ireland and france

By Conal Healy

It was on a few long haul flights from Ireland to and from Australia that I wondered “When should I sleep?”. Long haul flights can be anything between 24-36 hour long.

On a recent trip to Ireland, I boarded the plane at Coolangatta, Qld, to Melbourne, Victoria, (for a three hour stopover) then to Doha, Qatar. The flight to Doha took 14 hours.

It’s a daytime flight so the idea of sleeping on the next leg, ie Doha to Dublin, was tempting. If you did that you slept during the night, arrived in Ireland at 6am and have the first day there, with a night’s sleep under your belt. That’s a good plan.

In reality, it’s 24 hours before you land in Doha after waking up early to get the 8.30am flight to Melbourne. And there is nothing worse that getting through Security, finding a boarding gate after being awake for 24 straight.

By the time I got to the Doha to Dublin leg I was exhausted. And a sprint race in the airport at Doha made me almost manic. I took some Phenergan and slept for two hours, maybe. I got to Dublin, made it to a bedroom and napped for two hours. By now I had lost track of how much sleep I had missed and was trying to catch-up. I never did.

On the flight back to Brisbane I grabbed some sleep on both legs of the journey. Well, it wasn’t sleep – just not being fully awake.

My advice? You should accept that you will not sleep on the plane. You will arrive at your destination feeling like shite. You have to find ways of lessening your shittness.

A good sleep the night before is good. It’s not helpful if you have to get up  at – as the Australian’s say – Sparrow’s Fart to get to an airport.

Phenergan helped me nap. Naps on long haul flight help do help, but in reality you won’t sleep.

Unless you are in first class, of course.

(NB: Changi Airport, Singapore, does have Snooze Lounges that allow travellers to stretch out and sleep.)

(NB: My Fitbit sleep scanner usually refuses to admit I am actually sleep when I fly long haul. It’s all to depressing.)

Footnote: On a long haul flight from Ireland I had a 10-hour layover in Hong Kong. I found a nice, empty departure lounge and curled up on the floor and slept.

An alarm on my phone woke me a few hours later, I rubbed the sleep from my eyes and realised – to my horror – that the once-empty lounge was now filled with hundreds of tourists bound for China.

And that I – a six-foot tall, heavily bearded dressed in Irish winter clothes – was attracting a lot of attention.

I apologised to the nearby families clutching their childen, gathered up my belongings and walked away … resisting the urge to perform my usual Welcome to the Day Body Scratch.

Airport floors are not good places to nap.