Time your flights just right, and you'll feel less zonked at your destination
My husband likes to tell the story of the time we flew home from Bali, then met friends out at a New York City pub … and I fell so asleep at the table, I tumbled off my barstool. In my defense, who hasn’t crossed time zones and felt completely wrecked?
Jet lag can seriously mess you up, even if you haven’t flown halfway across the world. While there are tricks for getting over jet lag, I can’t help but wonder: Isn’t there anything else I can do? Can I time my flights to reduce the shock to my system?
To find out, I reached out to body clock scientist Helen Burgess, PhD, co-director of the Sleep and Circadian Research Laboratory in the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. Burgess shared why crossing time zones throws off our body clock (it isn’t the reason you think) and how to book travel to minimize jet lag.
Read on to learn how to time your next flight so exhaustion doesn’t land you on the floor of a pub or turn you into the butt of your family’s best jokes.
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What causes jet lag?
We all have a central circadian clock in our brains that controls our sleep-wake cycle, Burgess explains. Jet lag happens because when we quickly cross time zones, our circadian clock struggles to adapt to local time. This leaves us feeling off, with nighttime insomnia, daytime sleepiness, brain fog and irritability.
The trick to reducing jet lag is to help your body shift your circadian clock closer to the local time at your destination. One under-the-radar way to do that is by strategizing your flight’s landing time.
What is the best time to land in your destination to avoid jet lag?
While there isn’t one time of day that guarantees you’ll avoid jet lag, there is a general timing rule that can help. The ideal timing varies, though, based on whether you are flying east or west. Here is your best game plan, depending on which way you’re headed.
If you’re traveling east
When you’re jetting east, you want to book a flight that avoids landing in the early morning hours. “Most people find flying east to be much more challenging than flying west because it requires us to shift earlier,” Burgess says.
Traveling in this direction means beginning and ending your day earlier than you’re used to. Say you fly from New York to London: You will be going to bed around 11 p.m. London time, which is 6 p.m. for you. “Shifting earlier is like swimming against the tide,” Burgess says. “It’s just harder to do.” (That rings true for me: I can rally to stay up until 2 a.m. for a party, no problem, but if I try to make myself fall asleep at 9 p.m. one night, it feels utterly impossible.)
Of course, you don’t always have an exact choice over when you land. Most flights from the U.S. to Europe land in the morning. Just pick the latest one you can find, Burgess advises. So go with the 10:15 a.m. arrival instead of the 6:20 a.m. landing. It helps reduce jet lag by making it easier for your circadian central clock to sync up to local time. In a minute, we’ll explain exactly what that is.
If you’re traveling west
When you’re flying west, you need to shift your body clock later—as in, your day will now start and end later. To help with this adjustment, try to touch down as early in the day as possible. This will help your body rebound quicker and shift to local time.
If you’re doing a Boston-to-Honolulu trip, say, you’ll aim to land in Hawaii early in the afternoon rather than in the evening. Going from Miami to Los Angeles? Pick the morning flights that arrive midday or early afternoon Pacific Time (PT) rather than the ones that arrive at night.
Why does this flight timing help reduce jet lag?
Choosing early landings if you’re going east and later landings if you’re going west is the smart move because it works with—not against—your circadian clock, helping sync your body to local time. The science of it all may seem complex, but once you understand how your internal clock works, it’s easy to use that info to cut jet lag.
How your circadian clock works
Your circadian clock controls your sleep-wake cycle, dictating when you start to snooze and when you begin to rise. “ The time it takes for your [internal] clock to complete one full cycle is actually a little bit longer than 24 hours—it’s 24.2 hours,” Burgess says.
There are two critical times in our circadian clock cycle that signal sleep and wake times. The first one is at night, two hours before your usual sleep time, when your body releases melatonin to help prepare for sleep. “Your body enters into what we call the ‘biological night,'” she explains. “It clicks over and signals the pineal gland in the brain to start secreting melatonin.”
The second key point in your sleep-wake cycle happens two to three hours before you normally wake up in the morning. Called the “crossover point,” it is when your melatonin level is at its lowest. Your body temperature is also at a low point, incidentally. Right when your melatonin levels are bottoming out, your body is preparing to wake up.
How to use your internal clock to beat jet lag
Research, including a study co-authored by Burgess, found there are two ways to nudge your clock a little later or earlier to beat jet lag. “The strongest way to shift the clock, by far, is with light,” Burgess says. “You can also use melatonin.”
The key is to watch your light exposure so you don’t get a lot of light at the wrong time, which can further throw off your circadian rhythm because “our bodies are most sensitive to light when the sun is not out,” she notes.
In essence, choosing the wrong time can actually increase your jet lag, not ease it. But when you opt for earlier landings when flying east and later when flying west, you circumvent this problem and feel a whole lot better.
How does getting light at the wrong time make jet lag worse?
Early morning landings are a problem with eastward travel because you get exposed to morning light at the wrong time, Burgess explains. Let’s say you’re flying from Boston to London, which involves a five-hour time difference. You touch down in London at 7 a.m.—that’s 2 a.m. to you. If you normally wake up at 7 a.m., your crossover time (when your body’s melatonin is at its low point) would be around 4 or 5 a.m. Eastern Time (ET), so you want to avoid light exposure before then.
But if you start sightseeing in London at 8 a.m., your body is getting blasted with light (sunlight and artificial light both count) before your crossover time (remember, it’s still 3 in the morning to you). This will have the unfortunate effect of shifting your body clock even later when you need to move it earlier. Even worse? It will make you stay up later at night, which is the exact opposite of what you want.
On the other hand, if you land at 10 a.m. or later London time, it’s already 5 a.m. your time. You are right around your crossover point, so light exposure is helpful and won’t send your body clock in the wrong direction.
This works the opposite way when traveling east to west. When Burgess flies from her home in the Midwest to visit relatives in Sydney, Australia, she aims to get in earlier in the day. Of course, it’s not always possible to perfectly time flight arrivals, but you can still use this as a general rule of thumb. If you have a choice of two times, choose the earlier landing when headed west and the later one when traveling east.
What are other tips for beating jet lag?
There are several other tricks frequent fliers use that can help your system adapt more easily to local time:
Turn to tech
The Timeshifter app was created by a Harvard scientist to help frequent fliers beat jet lag. You load in your trip data and normal sleep patterns, and the app gives you a personalized plan to avoid jet lag, including lifestyle advice like timing your caffeine intake.
Microdose melatonin before you jet off
Instead of taking a typical dose of melatonin (which might be 4 or 5 milligrams), take just 0.5 milligrams and have it three to four hours before you go to bed, Burgess recommends. So if you’ll be traveling east and want to shift your bedtime to 9:30 p.m., take your mini dose of melatonin at 5:30 or 6 p.m.
More melatonin is not better, she warns. A bigger dose will zonk you out before dinnertime, which will make you even more messed up. The small amount, however, is just enough to trick your body into releasing its own melatonin earlier in the night, which then signals your brain to start shifting your body clock forward.
Wear light-blocking glasses during layovers
This prevents you from scrambling for early-morning connecting flights and getting blasted with light that screws up your circadian clock. When Burgess is flying to Sydney and has to switch planes, she wears her blue-light-blocking glasses in the airport. True blue blockers have orange lenses, by the way.
“Flight attendants will stop me and say, ‘Is that a new fashion? What the heck is that Star Trek–looking thing?’ It’s embarrassing,” she admits, “but I’m like, ‘I’m never going to see these people again, so I’m going to practice what I preach as a circadian researcher.'”
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Sources:
- Helen Burgess, PhD, co-director of the Sleep and Circadian Research Laboratory in the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor; phone interview, Jan. 16, 2026
- Sleep Medicine Clinics: “How to Travel the World Without Jet Lag”
