You're boarding a ten-hour flight with your spouse and two kids, ages 6 and 8. You settle into your seats and turn on the in-flight entertainment hopeful for an uneventful, relaxing flight.
Unfortunately, something is wrong and your personal entertainment device shows nothing but a fuzzy, black screen.
An hour into the flight, you learn that around half of the plane's entertainment isn't working.
You have nine hours to go and nothing to do.
This exact scenario happened to my family last week on a flight home from Zurich, Switzerland. Unfortunately, this glitch wasn't the only problem we found. Once we realized our in-flight entertainment devices went out, we decided to plug the kid's Kindles in so they could kill some time playing Minecraft. Inexplicably, our outlets weren't working, either.
Here's how we coped and what you can do in a similar situation:
Switch Seats
If seats are open in the same cabin on your plane, you can always ask to switch (or don't ask and do it anyway).
Although the screens weren't working on our half of the plane, some of the outlets were working in various seats. Fortunately, our flight attendant let us switch seats and so we could plug in our devices.
Work with What You Have
Since we counted on in-flight entertainment to keep us occupied, we didn't bring a lot of stuff to do on this particular trip. Still, we did have two Kindles and our cell phones.
Throughout the ten-hour flight, the kids were able to play games and goof around while we read or watched movies on our phones.
[READMORE]READ MORE: Air Travel 101: How to Get Through a Long Flight[/READMORE]
Ask About Free Resources
This particular flight-from-hell was Delta flight 67 from Zurich to Atlanta. Delta offers an in-flight app you can access via free wifi for movies and games. I had to download the app on the plane, but we were able to watch Trolls and The Secret Life of Pets on my phone before it died.
Splitting my headphones with my eight-year-old to watch movies on my tiny Samsung Galaxy wasn't ideal, but it was better than nothing.
Eat and Drink
A long flight with nothing to do is the perfect time to eat and drink-a lot. Our flight attendants must have felt particularly sorry for us since they came around with extra cups of ice cream several times.
Since international flights typically offer free wine and beer, you can take advantage there, too. A long, boring flight is a lot easier to endure after a few Heinekens!
[READMORE]READ MORE: Air Travel 101: Do's and Don'ts of Flying With Kids[/READMORE]
Go to Sleep
While we were stuck in coach for this particular flight, I did have a travel pillow with me. A few beers or a glass of wine can also make it easier to get some shut-eye. When you have hours of nothing ahead of you, sometimes the best thing to do is lean back, close your eyes and pray for the swift passage of time.
Air travel isn't perfect, and airlines can't always anticipate when things might go awry. The best any of us can do is try our best to entertain ourselves and pass the time without losing our minds.
Even the longest flight will land eventually, even if it seems like the moment will never come.
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