Travel Planning
How to Prepare for Long-Haul Travel to Africa
Routing, connections and jet lag — arriving in a state to enjoy the first day rather than sleep through it.
- Category Travel Planning
- Reviewed 28 July 2026
- Sources 1
- Length 1 min read
The flight is the part of the trip nobody plans and everybody endures. A few decisions made at booking decide whether day one is useful or spent horizontal.
Almost everything connects
Direct long-haul into Africa is the exception. Most routes go through a hub — Gulf carriers, the big European airports, or the African hubs at Addis Ababa, Nairobi and Casablanca — and which hub you choose changes the total journey time considerably more than the airline’s seat width does.
Compare total door-to-door time rather than flight time. A cheaper itinerary with a nine-hour layover is not cheaper.
Choosing the connection
- Too short is a missed flight; too long is a wasted day — the middle is usually two to four hours
- Prefer one connection over two, and pay for it if the difference is modest
- A single ticket through one alliance protects you if a leg is delayed; two separate tickets do not
- Check whether the connection needs a transit visa for your nationality
- Arriving in daylight is worth real money on a first visit
A cheaper itinerary with a nine-hour layover is not cheaper.
Jet lag is about direction
Much of Africa sits within a few hours of European time, so travellers from Europe arrive nearly unaffected while travellers from North America face a genuine shift. Eastward travel — shortening your day — is generally the harder direction to adjust to.
The broad guidance is consistent: get daylight at the right end of the new day, shift your sleep before you fly if you can, and treat the first night as the one that matters. For anything medical, including sleep aids, ask a clinician rather than an article.
The flight itself
- Drink more water than feels necessary and less of everything else
- Move every couple of hours; ask a clinician about compression stockings if you have any risk factors
- Set your watch to the destination on boarding and eat on that schedule
- Keep medication, documents and one change of clothes in the cabin
- Plan nothing on the arrival day beyond getting to where you are sleeping