depressing that air travel has come to this, but since it has - sleepinginairports is a great resource. combine the practical advice of sleepinginairports, with the feeling of intellectual superiority from askthepilot on salon, and you are well armed to do battle with the friendly skies!

-matt
[www.blist.com]

mathewgj

I seriously considered spending the night in JFK earlier this year - I had a godawful 10:30 pm-5:00am layover. I ended up staying at a hostel and staying up all night anyway; I have a particularly horrid morbid fear of missing flights which generally prevents me from sleeping during layovers.

After flying many, many redeyes over the last couple of years (the 1am-5am Denver to New York run is standard, with typically a two or three hour layover before a mid-morning flight out of JFK) my preference for sleeping in airports is: don't. Read, journal, veg out with music, call everyone I know to keep me company, dear god, ANYTHING but sleep. The only concievable way it would happen is if I were stranded overnight with delays and I'd already been traveling long enough to be drop-dead exhausted - if that's the case, the airline damn well better be providing access to a comfy lounge. Still, this is an entertaining and (oh, please, no!) potentially useful fresh perspective on the airports I fly to frequently.

lyndyn

I went to Italy last year and ended up sleeping on a freezing cold floor all night, I say sleeping, I was awake all night. Wish I'd heard of this site sooner! My tip is get by a power plug and then you can watch/listen to your iPod all night :p

pixelkid

I slept in Amsterdam airport once. I was kicked out of the internet cafe and ended up sleeping on the floor. I don't know if its such a good idea but I don't travel internationally anymore w/o a prescription sleep aid. That way no matter where you are you can pop a pill and sleep somewhere close to the appropriate local time.

tange1

This article is completely nuts. I wouldnt carry all that extra stuff with me to be prepared for a layover. Bring a smartphone with a SD card, with movies, music, etc. on it, it takes up no room or weight what so ever, and if you do decide to sleep bring a kryptonite lock and bike chain, so when you do wake up your carryon and personals aren't on a flight out of there with someone else. WOW

bann3d

Played ultimate frisbee in college and every year we slept in the airport on the last night of our spring break trip. Actually wasn't all that bad. Most of us had sleeping bags and thermarests so it was fairly comfortable. We had to sleep outside the ticketing counter because we couldn't check in so early, but surprisingly were never given a hard time by security. We just made sure to have someone stay awake to watch everyone's stuff and just cover the night in shifts. Some suckers wouldn't do it and shelled out the money for hotel rooms. Ahh memories. My wife would kill me if we did that now :).

link7

i completely agree with lyndyn! there is absolutely no point in sleeping in airports and its next to impossible!

myusuf05

I was chitchating with a fellow traveller and he was telling me very soon, some clever engineer will hopefully get some antigrav startrekish, flying carpet device to work and then byebye to all that tsa-travel-delays-sleeping-in-airports cr*p (pardon my French.) Amen to that, buddy!

SamVed

When I fly, I'm usually travelling alone. Thank God I was never faced with a delay that required me to remain in the airport overnight. If I did I would have been unable to sleep from fear that I would be robbed.

xenobyte72

I was in the marching band in college. we flew out from SC to the game in MS with the intentions of flying back after the game. But then our travel bus ran into our little plane on the tarmac. They put the footballers up in a hotel for the night, but is musicians had to sit in the lobby of the airport all night. We tried to sleep, but it was impossible. We din't have changes of clothes, we didnt have bedding. So we taxi'd down the street to the Ho-Jo and pitched in for a room. Then some guys filled the tub with ice, and someone went to the package store... well, it was the greatest layover of my life. back on point, if you have to sleep in the air port, sit in the corner on the floor.

curtisearl

@curtisearl: Ah -- sexually active band geeks. Good times, good times.

mdmadph