I used to get off long-haul flights looking like I was ready for Halloween. Spooky. Singapore to London is thirteen hours of recycled air, altitude, and the kind of dehydration that no amount of complimentary water can fix. Add in high-sodium snacks and very possibly a cheeky glass of red with the in-flight meal, and I would arrive at Heathrow with skin so tight and dull it felt like not my face. My under-eyes had given up, my lips were shirvelled impressions of their former selves, and the first thing I needed at my destination wasn’t cute photos or a drink in the places to be seen, but about two hours in the shower to recover from the journey. It took an embarrassing number of flights before I realised I could do something about this while I was still on the plane.
I want to be upfront about something before we start. If you have normal, unbothered skin, you will be absolutely fine without any of this. Drink some water, maybe put on a lip balm, and you will land looking perfectly acceptable. This routine is not for you. It is for the rest of us: the sensitive skin people, the acne-prone people, the people whose skin starts complaining the moment the cabin pressure changes. It’s for anyone who has ever landed somewhere important and spent the first twenty minutes of the trip stressing about their skin rather than actually enjoying themselves. If that sounds familiar, keep reading. The routine that follows is what I have landed on after years of trying things that worked and things that absolutely did not. I have split it into two versions because not every flight deserves the same commitment. A short-haul edit for when you just need the basics, and a long-haul version for the kind of journey where your skin needs real support. You won’t need to turn the aircraft bathroom into a spa, but thankfully, both only require about five minutes of planning before you board and packing the right things in your hand luggage.
Santise Before You Start: Antibacterial Surface Spray
Short-haul and long-haul
A plane tray table is one of the least sanitary surfaces most of us encounter in daily life, and the first thing you are going to do is put your skincare products on it. Spray it down with an antibacterial surface spray, leave it per the instructions, wipe it with a tissue, and you have a clean surface. The bathroom counter is exactly the same, if not worse. Before anything touches that surface or your face, Evans Dermalogical Personal Sanitizing Spray gets sprayed first. It is 75% alcohol in a 30ml bottle that fits in any bag pocket and costs almost nothing. It sounds obsessive until you think about what the person in that seat before you might have done with that tray table, at which point you may consider buying in bulk.
Evans Dermalogical Personal Sanitizing Spray. Shop Now
Start With A Blank Canvas: Makeup & SPF Removal
Short-haul and long-haul
If you’re wearing makeup (optional) or SPF (mandatory for day flights) onto the plane, take it off before you do anything else. Bioderma Sensibio H2O on a cotton pad, held against the skin for a few seconds and wiped away, removes everything without rinsing or tugging. The 100ml travel size goes straight through security. There’s also something physically and emotionally refreshing about removing your makeup and SPF mid-flight, especially if you’re sitting around mouth breathers. Enjoy this step for it’s physical sensation, but take a moment to wipe away the stress of customs too. Your skin will appreicate the drop in cortisol.
Bioderma Sensibio H2O. Shop now
The Step You Didn’t Know You Needed: Hypochlorous Acid Spray
Short-haul and long-haul
Once the skin is clean, the first thing I apply is a hypochlorous acid spray. Hypochlorous acid sounds more alarming than it is, but I use it to ensure no sneaky bacteria have survived after the micellar water. It’s actually the compound your own white blood cells produce to fight bacteria, and as a face spray, it disinfects skin gently without disrupting the barrier in the way an active ingredient (such as benzoyl peroxide) would. On a plane, in recycled air, surrounded by strangers, this step makes more sense than it does almost anywhere else. Order Tower 28’s SOS Daily Rescue Facial Spray as part of your holiday prep, pack it in your liquids bag, and you will end up using it long after the trip. Just be careful if you’re shopping other brands, as hypochlorous doesn’t play well in the bottle with other ingredients, so anything promising this alongside a host of other actives or soothers is probably not going to deliver results.
Tower 28 SOS Daily Rescue Facial Spray. Shop now
De-Puff Before You Deboard: Eye & Face Serum
Long-haul
The Ordinary Caffeine’s Solution 5% + EGCG, tapped gently around the eye area with a ring finger, is one of the better investments at this price point. It’s for anyone who doesn’t want to arrive looking like they haven’t slept for weeks, which is basically everyone on every long flight. The move that most people aren’t making yet is following it with The Ordinary’s new Caffeine 3% + Escin 1% on the rest of the face. Escin is derived from horse chestnut and works alongside caffeine to reduce visible puffiness across the whole face, not just the eye area. At hour six of a long-haul flight, that difference is visible. Use them together and you’ll step off the plane looking significantly more snatched than your fellow passengers, with no puffiness-related problems getting through facial recognition and a cute ‘just touched down’ selfie as a reward for your clever packing.
The Ordinary Caffeine 3% + Escin 1%. Shop now
Hydrations Vs Moisturisation: Face Cream
Short-haul and long-haul
Torriden’s Dive In Soothing Cream is the moisturiser I reach for on flights and have ended up reaching for everywhere else because of it. What makes it work in cabin air specifically is that it’s not relying on humidity to do its job, like other gel formulas. The 5D hyaluronic acid complex works at five different molecular weights, hydrating at the skin’s surface and deeper layers simultaneously, while the emollient components in the formula create a light physical layer over the top that slows moisture escaping into the very dry air around you. The texture feels lightweight and absorbs quickly, which matters when you’re sitting still for hours and don’t want anything sitting heavily on your skin. It’s fragrance-free, gentle enough for sensitive and acne-prone skin, and comes in a travel size that fits in the liquids bag without thinking about it.
Torriden Dive In Soothing Cream. Shop now
The Long-Haul Lipid Upgrade: Overnight Face Mask
Long-haul
For anything over six hours, I follow the Laneige with Kiehl’s Ultra Facial Overnight Rehydrating Mask with 10.5% Squalane. It is technically an overnight mask but the cabin environment calls for exactly what it delivers: a balm-to-oil formula that transforms on contact and creates a real seal over everything underneath. The squalane concentration is high enough to hold moisture for hours in a genuinely dehydrating environment. This is also exactly why the tray table spray and hypochlorous steps matter so much at the beginning. You are locking in everything you have applied and nothing else, and that only works if your skin is clean to start.
Kiehl’s Ultra Facial Overnight Rehydrating Mask. Shop now
Multitask While You’re Watching: Reusable Eye Patches
Long-haul
Once your eye serum has absorbed and your moisturiser has settled, the Sephora Collection Silicone Reusable Eye Patches go on top. They hold the hydrating ingredients against the skin so they actually penetrate rather than evaporating into the cabin air, and they stop you from unconsciously touching your under-eye for the next hour. They also tend to discourage conversation from whoever is sitting next to you, which is occasionally useful. Put them on, pick a film, forget about them. Wash them between uses and they’ll last indefinitely. They take up hardly any space, and make a more visible difference to the under-eye area than almost anything else on this list.
Sephora Collection Silicone Reusable Eye Patches. Shop now
Window Seat Protection Protocol: SPF
Short-haul and long-haul day flights
If you are flying during the day, sunscreen is not optional. The atmosphere at altitude is thinner and UVA rays come directly through aircraft windows, meaning a window seat on a clear day delivers more UV exposure than standing outside would. Supergoop! Unseen Sunscreen is the one that works here because it sits over everything without disrupting what is already on the skin. For reapplication mid-flight, iUNIK Centella Calming Daily Sun Water is the format I now keep specifically for this: a watery SPF 50+ PA++++ that presses into the skin without disturbing anything underneath and feels hydrating enough that putting it on again actually improves skin hydration rather than weighing it down. If you want a no-fuss option, the Round Lab Birch Juice Moisturizing Sun Stick goes in a bag pocket and takes fifteen seconds.
Supergoop! Unseen Sunscreen. Shop now
Never Skip The Lip: Lip Balm
Short-haul and long-haul
Laneige Lip Sleeping Mask goes on at the start of every flight and gets reapplied every couple of hours. Cabin air dries lips faster than almost anything else, and arriving somewhere with cracked or peeling lips just isn’t the fantasy we’re going for. The formula is thick enough to actually stay and do something rather than disappearing within twenty minutes like most lip balms. Keep it in the seat pocket and reach for it regularly.
Laneige Lip Sleeping Mask. Shop now
The In-Flight Reset: Bi-Phase Face Mist
Long-haul
At some point in a very long flight, I shake the Bioheal BOH Panthecell Repair Cica Ampoule Mist, spray it over my face, and pray to the travel gods that my skin will stay hydrated and my luggage won’t be lost. It’s bi-phase, meaning it contains both an oil and water layer that separate between uses. The oil component is what stops the hydration from evaporating instantly in cabin air, which is the exact problem a standard water mist creates rather than solves. The formula is built around 30% centella asiatica and 1% panthenol, both of which are doing real work on a barrier that has spent several hours in a dehydrating environment. It’s fragrance-free too, which helps out stressed skin in recycled air, especially if you’re reapplying numerous times over several hours.
Bioheal BOH Panthecell Repair Cica Ampoule Mist. Shop now
Final Thoughts: What Your In-Flight Skincare Routine Should Be
Every step in this routine exists because planes are unfriendly to your skin in different ways. Understanding how is what makes the whole routine effective. The recycled air removes moisture and circulates bacteria. The altitude increases UV exposure. The surfaces are more unhygienic than your bathroom at home. The sleep is disturbed and the hours are long. If you have skin that complains about any of those things on the ground, it will complain more loudly in the air. The short-haul version of this takes about five minutes and addresses the most urgent skin concerns. The long-haul version takes closer to ten and addresses all of them. Neither requires a trip to the bathroom, but taking 10 minutes away from the drink service and the person next to you with their feet unsocked is an act of self-care that goes beyond applying things to your skin. Pack the right products before you leave to address the specific concerns air travel presents, and you land at your destination ready to get your trip started. Don’t waste the first day wishing you had an extra day to recover.
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