Your plane lands. You collect your carryon bag and join the press of bodies exiting the aircraft. The crowd peters out and you check your watch – six and one half hours until your connecting flight boards. Fortunately, you planned your trip well, saw this coming, and are prepared. There are many ways to keep occupied and productive during a long layover.
Some airports offer many entertainments, activities and distractions. As soon as you realize you will have a long layover, research the airport and explore your options. Singapore’s Changi Airport, for example, includes a swimming pool, napping areas, six gardens (including a butterfly garden and two koi ponds), music lounges, a movie theater, a gaming room, children’s playgrounds, beauty salons and spas, supermarkets and free tours of the city. Your layover can be a mini-vacation in the middle of your flight, but even a layover in a more sparsely-equipped airport can be enjoyable.
Your first priority should be to attend to practical matters. Use the restroom. Adjust your clothing. Have a snack. Due to the recycling of air in aircraft cabins, air travel can be very dehydrating, so have a drink – water and tea are best. If you are a regular traveler, or even someone who takes an annual vacation, it is well worth your time to make notes of any ideas that will improve future travelling experiences. A few notes, such as “Tape loose backpack straps”, and “Babies scream on airplanes – bring ear plugs!” can really help next time around.
While you are being so forward-looking, you should visit your airline’s desk and see if you can get bumped to first class. If space is available, airlines will often allow you to change your seating arrangements for connecting flights and you won’t have to pay full price!
Layovers can also be a good time to look back, towards home. Did you forget to call Mom last night? Did you promise to send your best friend a post card to add to her collection? Your stay at the airport is the perfect time for these tasks. If you’ve brought your wireless-enabled laptop, or if your airport has an internet café, you can also read and send emails, or do research on your next port of call. The layover is also a good chance to make sure that all of your electronic devices, from your cell phone and laptop to your mp3 player and your razor are all fully charged.
With all of the personal maintenance and functional tasks taken care of, it’s time to have fun. Learn to enjoy the layover. Listen to music on your mp3 player or portable CD player. If you’re the gaming type, whip out your Gameboy or similar item. If you have a laptop, you have music, games, and movies at your finger tips. Just don’t forget your headphones, or Snakes on Plane will be interrupted by boarding calls and security announcements. You can also reading ebooks or work on the presentation you have to give when you reach sunny Iowa (or snowy Nome).
When travelling, it is easy to get out of touch with world events. Your layover is a great chance to catch up on news, whether online or from newspapers and magazines. A long layover is also just the time to savor several chapters of a good novel. If you’re not the reading type, bring along a book of crosswords, Sudoku or word search puzzles. Consider a book of brain teasers or other questions, such as David Borgenicht’s 200 Hilarious, Bold, Embarassing, Personal and Basically Pointless Questions.
Shopping is a great consumer of time, especially at larger airports with many shops. While shopping at airports often means higher prices, it may be your only chance to pick up a souvenir or gift from a country you’re only visiting briefly. Even if you don’t buy anything, you can explore and perhaps see some interesting artifacts and gizmos.
For the slightly more eccentric or creative traveler, there are still more options. Go to the different departure areas and try to meet a new pen pal from an exotic location. Since you can be fairly certain you will never see anyone you talk to again, it’s a great chance to be bold.
If you can’t (or won’t) muster up the courage to talk to strangers in a foreign airport, the next best thing is to make up stories about them. Let your creative juices flow. Maybe the worried looking man in the trench coat is a spy on a secret mission. Is the woman with the huge, dark glasses and wide-brimmed hat a European movie star trying to hide from the paparazzi? Why does that tall man have his trousers tucked into his socks? Is it because of this paranoia about centipedes? It’s always fun to speculate. More fun if you have an equally creative partner with which to work.
Whether travelling with a group or alone, a scavenger hunt will allow you to explore the airport, keep you moving, and kill time. Use a digital camera or camera phone to capture images of items you cannot collect. Either when making your layover plan or when you hit the ground, make a list of unusual item: a plastic fork, a mailbox, a person with a tattoo on his/her neck, Filson luggage, a guidebook for a country in the Middle East, a donut without a hole, an elephant, a yellow umbrella, a two day old newspaper, a dog in a crate. When you hit the ground, go hunting.
If you are very energetic (and a touch crazy), take off your shoes, run to get up speed and go floor surfing. If you don’t want to help sweep the terminal with your socks, grab a couple of luggage carts and have a race. After your victory in the Luggage Cart 500, stop by the customer service desk and have them make humorous announcements on the public address system. Remember to go for clever, not crude, and don’t stay too long as the security officers will be looking for you by this time.
If all of your travels, or your recent airport antics, have tired you out, why not end your layover with a nap. This is especially helpful if you are trying to combat the effects of jet lag. Pick out a quiet, low traffic area (such as the departure area from flights to Iceland), or use your own pending departure lounge so you can sleep until the last possible moment. Make your self comfortable. This usually means some planning so that you have a travel pillow or suitably soft sweater and jacket or blanket. You will also probably want ear plugs or a music source with headphones to keep out the noise, and dark glasses, a hat, or a sleep mask to keep out the light. Finally make sure you get up on time. Set the alarm on everything you have – your watch, cell phone, travel alarm clock and egg timer. The last thing you want to do is miss your connecting flight and have another long wait at the airport.
