Extra bag fees are usually for check in luggage not carry on luggage but there are some airlines that will allow you to purchase extra carry on.
Most airlines dont really enforce carry on luggage weights or size but if they do and they want to be strict they can offload the items especially if storage is limited. It’s all at the crews discretion though
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Summary.
Melatonin may be more useful after eastward flights, when you have to go to bed sooner than your body wants to, than after westward flights, when you have to stay up.
…so does that mean flights home to Australia from Europe?
Does melatonin work for jet lag?
It can help. But it depends where you’re going
Illustration: Cristina Spanò
Jan 8th 2025
Drop into any pharmacy in America and you will find jars of melatonin promising to relieve you of dreaded jet lag. There are tablets, pink gummies, potent-looking capsules—whatever appeals. But all you want to know is: does it work?
Melatonin is known as the “darkness hormone”. When the sun goes down, it is released by the pineal gland in the brain. Production peaks in the middle of the night before slowly falling as the morning light returns. Although driven by the biological clock, rather than darkness itself, the emergence and disappearance of light helps regulate the clock each day and keeps melatonin production synchronised to the day-night cycle. The night-time increase in melatonin puts people into a pleasant state that makes it easier for them to fall asleep. And when people are given melatonin during the day, they get sleepy then, too.
Disrupted melatonin production can lead to sleep disorders. People who are blind, for example, do not have their biological clocks set by the changing light. Because the natural clock runs a little slower than the 24-hour cycle, their melatonin production can diverge from the external day-night cycle. Drifting melatonin peaks eventually make them sleep during the day, even against their best intentions.
Jet lag, similarly, can cause melatonin disruptions. One reason is that sleep is interrupted by the bright lights of the plane cabin, but the much more detrimental effect comes from arriving at a destination with a day-night cycle out of sync with your biological clock. The clock, and the melatonin, can take days to catch up.
Managing jet lag with melatonin supplements, therefore, has become popular. But understanding whether or not they work is hard. Experiments that mess with people’s biological clocks in a controlled way, and which also recreate real-life scenarios, are not easy to do. Many studies, for instance, have kept people from sleep by exposing them to bright lights all night. But that is not only a little cruel, it is not an ideal way to model sleep disruption.
Instead, scientists have given melatonin to people who were travelling anyway, such as air cabin staff, soldiers and scientists travelling to conferences. In those cases, the supplements do seem to work. A landmark paper that pooled the results of five randomised controlled trials in 2002 found that people given melatonin rate their jet-lag experience as half as bad as those who are given a placebo, on a scale from zero to 100.
“Melatonin is quite effective if you have to speed up your clock,” says Derk-Jan Dijk, director of the Surrey Sleep Research Centre. “It’s not good at slowing down your clock.” That means taking melatonin may be more useful after eastward flights, when you have to go to bed sooner than your body wants to, than after westward flights, when you have to stay up. Fortunately for those with westward travel plans, there are other things you can do to help your biological clock adjust—gradually shifting the wake-sleep cycle in the days before the flight, for example, and getting natural sunlight and exercise during daytime hours at the destination, which helps adjust melatonin production.■
Please stop going to Japan.
1 million Australians visited Japan in 2024.
Far out….the poor Japanese.
What’s their equivalent of a Bintang singlet?
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I’m not as knowledgeable as @Aceman , but I prefer Vietnam Airlines to Paris rather than Turkish to Istanbul, if your ultimate destination is Europe.
The Vietnam flights are all A350 or B787 all the way, with 1-2-1 seat layout in business. The Turkish flights go via KL, and the legs between KL and Melbourne are older A330 planes with 5 or 6 seats per row in business; between KL and Istanbul you may get lucky with a 1-2-1 A350 or you may get a B777 with more seats per row. The Turkish seats are all lie flat and not bad, but the Vietnam Airlines planes are newer and seats are better. Prices are very similar. Vietnam also fly to Munich.
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Looks like I’ll be going to Malaga in Spain, for work…is there anything there or nearby worth staying in for a couple of days?
Do you like an easy hike ?
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Great place, one of the best in Spain. Great beaches, foods and lots to see.
We stayed at Suite Deluxe Face Mer Apart Malaga, really nice place, good rooms, on the water and a short walk to all the city centre things. Prices were OK, high I think in peak times.
Alcazaba fortress is worth looking at.
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I do love Vietnam Airlines but your information in regards to Turkish Airlines is incorrect.
Turkish run a 3x weekly “direct” service from Istanbul to Melbourne which has a short refueling stop in Singapore and you are on the brand new A350 all the way. They also offer a direct service to Sydney 4x weekly and that has a short fuel stop in KL but again is on the A350 all the way. Most of the A350’s that Turkish are flying to Australia are under 18 months old. Turkish have one of the largest route coverages in the world and pretty much fly to every port in Europe
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Yeah, that looks mad. Not a fan of that stuff, but worth a look.
I did get a beautiful new A350 from KL to Istanbul, but everything else Turkish was elderly. I must have had the wrong days for the direct flights on new planes.
A question re One World status on Qatar.
Looking at business class flights on Qatar from KUL to Spain. Seems quoted price does not include seat selection. I have Emerald One World status. Does anyone know if this allows me extra privileges when I book the cheaper business class fare or will I need to pay extra for seat selection etc?
The direct from Melbourne are Monday, Wednesday and Saturday and stop in Singapore. The direct from Sydney is on Tuesday, Thursday, Friday and Sunday and goes via KL. All are on the newest A350’s in their fleet. If you book on the other days they use codeshare flights with Jetstar, Qantas, Garuda, Malaysian and a couple of others through their Asian hubs and then you pick up the Turkish Airlines flight from there which could be any of their combinations and often older aircraft.
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OW status trumps fare class so you will get seat selections free. If you book the Business lite fare you won’t get access to the better QR lounges in Doha but your OW status will get you into the Platinum lounge which I can’t vouch for the quality.
Only one of the QR flights ex KUL has QSuites so you want the morning flight if possible
Thanks heaps. You are a legend.
Was hoping status would do it for me. If I’m booking two tickets (i.e. one for my wife) does the status cover both?
Yes it covers both
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The flights I had on Turkish last May were deficient in only the movie selection. Not many to my liking - i.e. they were only big-reps films, i.e. American. and sometimes, not subtitled.
so the tip i’ve got here is if your flight home is late at night, do waterbom on your last day
traffic in bali can get hectic, so rather than spend the afternoon sitting in a car to the airport, go to the airport in the morning, put your luggage in storage there, then walk to waterbom (about 20min).
fun day out, then have a shower and walk back to the airport feeling fresh for the flight home
You don’t really mean, walk there, do you. It is about 3 km down crappy Denpasar streets. Much better to catch a cab there and back.
if you don’t mind taking longer to get there, then sure
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