

Top Strategies for Surviving Airports and Airplanes - avk
http://lifehacker.com/5561002/top-10-strategies-for-surviving-airports-and-airplanes

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ben1040
1) Bring a short extension cord with multiple outlets, so you don't have to
fight with people in boarding lounges to charge your gear. This will also make
you a hero at conferences too...

2) If you're going to begin a long term run of traveling look into the
possibility of doing airline status challenges. I had started a job that had
me flying 5K miles a week -- while I still would have earned it later, getting
elite status in a month using the challenge meant better seats, better
treatment, and more miles earned on all those subsequent trips.

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grandalf
a few of mine:

eat a bag of peanut m&m's as soon as you sit in your seat, then use an eyemask
and drift off as the announcements are made. The sugar coma from the candy
will send you off to dreamland for at least the first hour of the flight. Use
earplugs and snag a window seat if you want to increase your odds of sleeping
longer. Or, buy a big meal in the terminal and eat it as soon as you are
seated for an even bigger food-coma-induced slumber.

If the person in front of you leans their chair back when your'e trying to
work, it's convenient to have a fake sneeze ready to unleash. I prefer to let
my lips smack a bit and let a few droplets of saliva spray out (while making a
sneeze sound). They will bring the chair back up for the rest of the flight.
If they start to look ready to lean back again, start sniffling.

If you're wearing a coat or blazer, be sure to ask to have it hung at the
front of the plane in the special closet reserved for this purpose. There may
not be seats in first class, but there is usually room for your jacket.

If you want to avoid an armrest hog, the best way is to allow your body to
touch theirs a bit too much at first with a subtle lean-in and leg adjustment,
so they decide to withdraw to obtain more personal space. When they do, the
armrest is yours. Don't relinquish it. A few sniffles sometimes help here as
well.

Wear a warmup suit, flip flops and socks when traveling. This is the optimal
outfit, particularly a hoodie, because you can use it to get extra
darkness/privacy if you need it.

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viraptor
My favourite trick: If you have a "print your own" check-in card, print it
with low DPI so the barcode on it can't be read with the scanner. On some
airports they will send you back to get another one from the check-in desks
and let you come back into a priority queue. On one airport I often use this
is MUCH faster than the standard queue. (<5 min. -vs- 10+ depending on the
queue)

Of course it doesn't work everywhere and don't try it if you're almost-late.

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gojomo
In what region does this work? My home-printed boarding passes only seem to be
scanned at the last moment, at the gate while boarding, so there's no more
lines to optimize at that point. (Or is TSA very subtly scanning it at ID
check before security? If so they've got a scanner-inside-a-penlight I've not
noticed in many trips...)

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viraptor
That's what I do at 2 UK airports, where the flow is:

    
    
        check-in/luggage -> pass check -> security queue -> security check -> boarding lounge -> boarding gate check
    

If you have the online checkin, you go straight to the pass check (where they
only scan the checkin to see if they should allow you in at all - no documents
check or anything else). So I'm skipping the security queue and go straight
into the security check basically (after reprinting). It doesn't work in
London for example, where the first pass check is done automatically on
machines and there's no queue before them.

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Anechoic
_So go ahead and find an aisle seat near the back._

It might get you good legroom, but it might also get you proximity to a smelly
lavatory with a broken door.

It also puts you behind the engines of most commercial airliners which means
more noise.

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binarymax
My advice for getting over jetlag: put yourself on the local clock
immediately. If you fly a red-eye, get as much sleep as you can on the plane -
then when you land in the morning stay awake the whole day and don't go to
sleep until after 10pm! If flying west, do the same - put yourself on the new
clock and go to sleep no later than 11pm or midnight. Also in both situations
- get some good exercise the first day at a hotel gym or pool. Also if you
have access to one, use a sauna!

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petervandijck
Take your own pillow, and not one of those wussy airline pillows either, but a
real, large, proper pillow. Works for me :)

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jared314
And, you don't have to pay extra for the pillow.

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icefox
drive

