How To De-Stress Before an International Flight

Use These Tips to Relax and Chillax Before Your Next International Flight

Finalizing all the arrangements for an international trip can feel anticlimactic because you’ve done all this work but have yet to reap any of the rewards from your research, bookings, and time spent putting everything together. You may even start to feel a little less than stellar when it’s just a few days before your trip, and you have so many things to remember.

All the packing, checking in for flights, making connections, and finding your way through places you may have never visited before can feel like a mountainous task. At a certain point, you might start wondering whether all the trouble to get there is actually worth it. Is 16 hours on a plane across the Pacific Ocean really worth it to see Vietnam?

There’s a very good chance that all of your worries will fall away once you’re on the plane, but there’s no reason you need to sit through the stressful 48 to 72 hours before you depart for your international vacation. There are some simple things you can do to reduce the inherent stress you might feel at packing up a suitcase and traveling halfway across the world on your next international flight.

As a frequent international traveler, I have to say that those worries do start to recede once you’ve flown across an ocean a few times, but the worries are never completely absent. Having gone on so many international trips, I’ve figured out how to reduce the stress a little bit before your flights, which may help you the next time you fly even if you consider yourself a seasoned traveler.

(note: some of the links here are to websites with which I am an affiliate, and your purchases help fund my website!)

Don’t Pack at the Last Minute

At one point in my traveling life, I never packed anything until the day before I left. I just didn’t want to have to stare at a half-filled suitcase for a week before I departed. What if I needed something in my suitcase or the suitcase got in the way? For overnight trips, you can pack 10 minutes before you leave, but I’ve found that packing about three days before you leave makes things much less hectic on the day of departure.

One of the reasons I think it reduces stress is that your mind has a few days to mull over things that you’ve put in your suitcase. You might rethink some of your packing choices or figure out a different way to pack something. You might realize you don’t actually need ten pairs of pants and can get along just fine with five.

Having packed quite early for some trips and quite late for other trips, I think the best time is about three days before departure. Any earlier and you’re risking packing things that you’ll need to use before you leave. Conversely, packing at the last minute can make things feel a little rushed and make you think you’re forgetting something, even when you’re not.

I spent decades traveling multiple times a year when I lived across the country from my family, and packing would eventually become quite automatic for me. But I wasn’t traveling internationally multiple times a year, and it was never going to feel like the end of the world if I forgot a toothbrush or something else. With international packing, giving yourself a few extra days to pack just seems to make things less stressful.

Avoid Crack-of-Dawn Flight Departures

Although your schedule might not always allow for it, try to avoid leaving on an international flight at the crack of dawn. Remember that you normally have to arrive at the airport three hours in advance, which means you have to leave your house with enough time to get to the airport three hours before the plane even takes off.

If your flight departs at 7 AM, that means you’re arriving at the airport at 4 AM, and if you live an hour from the airport, that probably means a 2 AM wake-up call and a drive at 3 AM to the airport. It’s almost impossible to avoid the stress that comes with having to meet such an early wake-up time, as well as the inherent last-minute running around that comes with leaving on an international trip.

There are a few reasons you might want to take an early morning flight, but it’s important to think really carefully before you commit to a crack-of-dawn departure. The first reason is that there is only one flight, and that flight just happens to depart at an inconveniently early time. There’s nothing you can really do about your flight time in that case.

The second reason is when you have the opportunity to save a significant amount of money. We’re talking hundreds of dollars. If one ticket is $1,200 and leaves at 2 PM, but you can get a different ticket for $700 by flying at 7 AM, by all means, consider the crack-of-dawn departure. But don’t book an early flight just to save $40 or $50. It’s truly not worth it in the grand scheme of things unless you’re saving a significant amount of money.

Go to Sleep at Your Normal Time

You might find yourself having a tough time getting to sleep when you’re due to get on an international flight the next morning, but the worst thing you can do is try to get to bed really early the night before you leave, even if your flight is an early one and you’ll have to get up at or before dawn. Unless you take some sort of sleep supplement, you’ll probably just sit there awake half the night.

Unless you’re willing to train your body to adapt to the new time zone well in advance of your trip, there’s no reason to change your schedule to that of your destination country nor is there any reason to go to bed at a time that your body’s not used to (like really early). Your body just won’t cooperate with you, and the stress of the coming trip will just complicate matters.

Remember that flying internationally usually means you’ll be sitting on a flight for several hours. If you’re just flying to Mexico or Canada from the United States, it might be just a few hours on a plane, but for those sorts of flights, you probably don’t need to rest up for the time zone change anyway. For those European, African, Oceanic, and Asian flights, however, you’ll be sitting on a plane for a long, long, long time.

Do you really need to get extra sleep before you go sit on a plane for ten hours? Probably not. You’ve already done your packing, you already have all your stuff laid out for the next day’s travel (right??). What could a few extra hours spent lying awake in your bed the night before your international departure possible do for you other than make you worried about catching your flight?

---

---