My first proper long-haul was Vienna to Dubai to Bangkok in 2018. Thirteen hours on the second leg, seat 54B, middle, between two strangers. I drank two cups of water the entire flight because I did not want to keep asking the man on the aisle to let me out. When we landed my ankles were the size of my calves and I slept through the first two days in Thailand.

I have done maybe thirty long flights since, and I have made most of the possible mistakes at least once, so I know which pieces of advice hold up and which are internet noise. Here are the eleven things I tell people in our office when they say they are flying further than Turkey for the first time.

The eleven, in order

1. Pick your seat when you book, not the day before. Aisle if you plan to drink water and move. Window if you plan to sleep and do not want to be woken hourly. The middle is the worst option, which is exactly why it is still free. Emirates and Qatar charge roughly 20 to 35 euros to choose. Check SeatGuru first, it warns you about seats that do not recline because they sit in front of an exit row.
2. Do not rely on the water they bring you. Buy a 1.5-litre bottle after security. Yes, it is three euros at the airport instead of sixty cents. Cabin crew hand out cups holding about 100 millilitres, which over thirteen hours is nothing. I aim for roughly 250 millilitres per hour of flight.
3. Put compression socks on at home, not on the plane. They sound like something for your grandmother, and they do exactly the job they claim to do. Any pharmacy sells them for 12 to 20 euros, class 1 is plenty. Pulling them on in a cramped seat four hours in is impossible, I have tested this.
4. Get up and walk, even when you cannot be bothered. Once every two hours, do a lap of the aisle and stand near the galley for a minute. Half the plane is doing it. This is about blood in your legs, not comfort.
5. Eat less than they give you. Airline food is salty and heavy so that it still tastes of something in dry cabin air. Eat both services plus every packet of salted nuts and you land feeling like you swallowed a brick. I bring a banana, almonds and a cereal bar, and I eat about half the tray. Skip the alcohol, it dries you out and the sleep it gives you is shallow.
6. Leave at least two hours for a connection. The minimum connection time your booking engine shows, often 45 or 60 minutes, is theoretical. In Dubai you take a train between terminals and with security it eats 40 minutes when there is no queue. On a single ticket the airline rebooks you for free if you misconnect. On two separate tickets it does not, and you lose the flight.
7. Carry on whatever you need to survive three days. Medication, chargers, spare underwear, a shirt, a toothbrush, basic toiletries. Bags go missing, and connections are where it happens. Mine once turned up in Amsterdam two days late. Photograph the contents of your suitcase before you close it, it helps with the claim.
8. Keep medication in its original box with the leaflet. Some ordinary European medicines cause trouble in the UAE and in Japan. If anything is on prescription, ask your doctor for a short note in English. Melatonin works for some people. It does nothing for me and it is not magic.
9. Download your entertainment onto both phone and tablet. The seatback screen breaks, in my experience on about a quarter of flights. Bring wired headphones with a jack plug, because Bluetooth ones will not pair with the screen on many aircraft. Power banks under 100 watt-hours are allowed in the cabin.
10. Sleep by destination time, not by when the cabin lights go off. Reset your watch as you board. If it is night where you are going, try to sleep. If it is daytime there, stay awake even if you are exhausted. An eye mask and earplugs cost three euros and beat anything else I have tried. A neck pillow helps, but the firm filled kind.
11. Plan nothing for your first day on the ground. This is the most important item here. Go outside, get daylight, walk, eat a proper meal, and go to bed at ten in the evening local time. Do not nap in the afternoon, however much you want to cry. Flying east, towards Asia, the jet lag is worse and takes roughly one day per time zone crossed.

Things that do not work, despite being everywhere

A few pieces of standard advice that I think are worthless.

• Fasting for 16 hours before the flight. Supposedly it resets your body clock. I tried it once. I was irritable and starving and my jet lag was identical.
• Sleeping pills. You sleep, but you do not move, which is precisely what you want to avoid. You also wake up foggy.
• Drinking yourself to sleep. You get an hour, then you lie there with a dry mouth.

You cannot win a long-haul flight. You can only get through it in a way that does not cost you the first two days of your holiday.

The short version

If you remember three things instead of eleven: drink water, walk, and do not nap on arrival day. Everything else is comfort.

When somebody books a long-haul trip with us, I go through the flights with them and I deliberately choose longer connections, even when it means landing an hour later. If your first long flight is coming up, call us and we will go through it together, seats included. It takes ten minutes and it costs nothing.