Most frequent fliers have a list of personal tricks for how to avoid jet lag: Exercise as soon as you get off the plane; skip the in-flight meal; and don't go near a drop of alcohol. But the Australian airline Qantas might have just ended the debate on the best ways to reset your body's clock while traveling.
The airline just released a years-long study on how to change inflight routines to reduce jet lag on its upcoming ultra-long-haul flights from New York and London nonstop into Sydney. (The flights, which launch in late 2025, will be up to 22 hours long, making jet lag and inflight comfort an important consideration.) Among the study's findings? Adjusted lighting, tailored sleep and dining schedules, and meals with specific ingredients helped significantly improve passengers' jet lag. Specifically, foods that encourage wakefulness or sleep, including chili and chocolate, were found to be especially helpful.
For the study, the airline gathered data on a nonstop test flight from New York to Sydney in 2019 onboard which 23 volunteer passengers wore biometric monitors and kept logs of how they felt for the week before the flight, during the flight, and for two weeks after the flight.
According to the just-released results, the volunteers on the tailored in-flight schedule reported getting better quality of sleep on the flight, less severe jet lag on arrival, and having better cognitive performance in the two days after the flight.
A major component of the adjusted schedule was timing the in-flight meal service to align with the internal body clock and serving dishes that promoted the brain's production of tryptophan, an amino acid linked to sleepiness. These dishes included "fish and chicken paired with fast-acting carbohydrates, as well as comfort foods like soups and milk-based desserts," the airline said in a statement.
Other helpful factors included custom cabin lighting schedules designed to help passengers adapt to the time zone in their destination, as well as stretches and movement activities. In fact, Qantas is designing its Airbus A350 planes that will operate its ultra-long-haul routes to have a special wellness area where economy passengers can do their stretching and other exercises guided by video screens-or grab a healthy snack.
"The early findings have given us optimism that we can make a real difference to the health and wellbeing of international travelers, thanks to this partnership with Qantas," said Peter Cistulli, professor of sleep medicine at the University of Sydney, which helped the airline with the study. "We have a multi-disciplinary team of more than 10 researchers from medicine, science, and engineering backgrounds working together on this project. This includes sleep researchers, circadian experts, nutrition and movement experts. No airline has ever done this kind of research before."
The airline also says it's conducting parallel research on crew wellbeing on the ultra-long-haul flights, but it hasn't yet released findings from those studies. Although the length of the upcoming nonstop flights may seem daunting, Qantas says that the new routes will shave three hours off of total travel time, compared to itineraries with a layover.