The no-screen flight: what happens when you actually try it
Raw-dogging a flight — no film, no music, no phone — became a competitive sport online. There is something in it, and a middle path that is better than both extremes.
onesim team
At some point the internet decided that the correct way to cross an ocean is to stare at the seat-back map for seven hours with no film, no music, no book and no sleep. The name it gave this — raw-dogging a flight — is not one we will use twice, but the practice is real, competitive, and mostly posted by men describing it as a personal achievement.
It is easy to mock and there is genuinely something in it. Just not the version in the videos.
What is actually going on
A long flight is one of the last places with no incoming messages, no notifications and nothing you are supposed to be doing. That is rare enough now that people have started treating it as a resource rather than dead time.
The moving map helps more than it should. It is slow, it has a destination, and it gives you something to look at that makes no demands. The state people describe — a sort of flat calm two hours in — is just what attention does when it stops being interrupted every ninety seconds.
Where the extreme version falls down
The performance version has three problems, and they are physical rather than aesthetic.
Not drinking. Several versions of the challenge include no water. Cabin air is drier than most deserts, at around 10–20% humidity, and on a long flight dehydration is the main reason you arrive feeling wrecked. Drink about a glass of water an hour and skip the second coffee.
Not sleeping. Refusing to sleep on an overnight flight in order to prove something wastes the single most valuable thing available on the aircraft. If you are landing in the morning, sleeping on the plane is the whole jet-lag strategy.
Not moving. Sitting still for eleven hours is the actual health risk on a long flight — deep vein thrombosis is uncommon but not rare, and it correlates with immobility. Stand up and walk every couple of hours, and do ankle rotations in the seat.
The middle path
Something between eleven hours of Suits and eleven hours of staring at a bulkhead.
- 1
Decide the flight's job before you board · One sentence
Is this flight for sleeping, for working, or for arriving awake? Every other decision follows. An overnight to Europe is for sleeping. A daytime flight to Asia is for staying awake so that you sleep at the far end.
- 2
Take one analogue thing · A book, a notebook, a crossword
Paper does not need charging, does not autoplay the next episode and is not affected by turbulence. The people who report the calm are usually describing what a book does, with extra steps.
- 3
Set the watch to the destination at the gate · Not on landing
This is the single most effective jet-lag habit. Eat and sleep by the new clock from the moment you board, not from the moment you land.
- 4
Water, not the free wine · One glass an hour
Alcohol at altitude dehydrates faster and fragments sleep. If you want a drink, have it with a glass of water and stop after one.
- 5
Get up twice, minimum · And do the ankle thing
Walk to the galley, stand for two minutes, come back. Do it every two or three hours. Compression socks are not glamorous and they work.
Jet lag is a light problem, not a sleep problem
The reason the watch trick works is that your body clock is set mainly by light, not by how tired you feel.
The rule of thumb is about a day of adjustment per time zone if you do nothing, and roughly half that if you get the light right. Flying east — Europe to Asia, America to Europe — is the harder direction, because you are asking your body to sleep earlier than it wants to. Get morning light at the destination and keep bright screens away late.
Flying west is easier: you are staying up later, which most bodies do willingly. Get late-afternoon light and try not to nap on arrival before about 3pm local time.
Two things that genuinely help, and one that does not. Helping: eating on the destination's schedule from the moment you board, and getting outside within an hour of landing. Not helping: sleeping the whole flight regardless of the time at the far end, which is the most common mistake on a daytime eastbound flight.
What to download beforehand, if you want the option
The trick is to have the option and not to need it. Downloaded content weighs nothing and gives you an escape route on the flight where the seat-back screen is broken and the person next to you wants to talk.
On Wi-Fi, before you leave
- One film and two episodes, downloaded rather than streamed
- A playlist and two podcast episodes
- Offline maps for the arrival city, so the first twenty minutes are solved
- Your boarding pass in the wallet app, in case the airline app will not load at the gate
- Everything charged, including the power bank — most airlines now restrict using one in flight
The version worth keeping
You do not need to prove anything to a camera. But the next time you board a long flight, try leaving the entertainment system off for the first two hours. No film, no headphones, no phone.
Most people find that the two hours pass faster than the two hours of half-watching something would have done, and that the rest of the flight feels shorter. That is the whole trend, minus the dehydration.
