Flying has a funny way of making ordinary choices feel complicated, including what to order when the beverage cart reaches your row. Ginger ale has a loyal following, tomato juice somehow tastes better at altitude, and some travelers see a cocktail as part of the vacation.
But according to flight attendants interviewed by Travel + Leisure, the best drink on a plane is far less exciting: plain water. There are practical reasons why choosing water can make a noticeable difference, especially on longer flights. And some of those reasons have less to do with dramatic “dehydration” warnings than with what actually happens to your body inside a dry, pressurized cabin.
Why Plain Water Gets The Flight Attendant Vote
Flight attendants spend hundreds of hours in aircraft cabins, so their preference for water comes from repeated exposure to an unusually dry environment. One Texas-based flight attendant told Travel + Leisure that passengers often drink less while traveling because they do not want to make repeated bathroom trips. Choosing the best drink on a plane becomes especially useful when you have spent hours rushing through an airport, eating salty food, or simply forgetting to drink normally.
Water also avoids the added sugar, sodium, caffeine, and alcohol that may come with other popular beverage-cart choices. For passengers who want the simplest option, asking for bottled or poured-from-a-bottle water is an easy decision that requires no special travel routine.
Cabin Air Is Drier Than Most People Realize
Aircraft cabins can become remarkably dry during longer flights, and research gives some perspective on just how noticeable the effect can be. A small study indexed by PubMed found cabin relative humidity fell below 10% within two hours, while skin hydration on participants’ cheeks decreased by as much as 37%. Another review of the aircraft cabin environment cautions that low humidity by itself does not necessarily cause significant whole-body dehydration in healthy travelers, so claims that every passenger becomes dangerously dehydrated are overstated.
What dry air can clearly do is contribute to dry eyes, skin, throat, and nasal passages, which explains why passengers often feel unusually parched. That makes water the best drink on a plane for many travelers, even if drinking it cannot magically eliminate every uncomfortable effect of flying.
Your Taste Buds Change At Altitude Too
There is another reason travelers suddenly crave stronger flavors in the air: food and drinks genuinely taste different under cabin conditions. Research conducted by the Fraunhofer Institute for Building Physics found that salt can taste 20% to 30% less intense in simulated flight conditions, while sweetness can seem 15% to 20% weaker. That helps explain why intensely flavored beverages such as tomato juice can seem more appealing at cruising altitude than they do at home.
The downside is that reaching automatically for something sweeter or saltier may mean consuming ingredients you would not normally choose simply because your senses are muted. Water may seem boring by comparison, but that neutrality is precisely why the best drink on a plane does not need stronger flavor to do its job.
Alcohol Has A Tradeoff Passengers Should Know
A beer or glass of wine is not automatically disastrous for a healthy adult, but recent research gives travelers another reason to think carefully before drinking alcohol and sleeping at altitude. A 2024 study published in Thorax examined healthy adults sleeping under simulated aircraft-cabin pressure after moderate alcohol consumption. In the combined alcohol-and-low-pressure condition, median blood oxygen saturation fell to 85.32%, while median sleeping heart rate reached 87.73 beats per minute, compared with 88.07% oxygen saturation and 72.90 beats per minute under low pressure without alcohol.
The study was small and conducted in a controlled altitude chamber rather than aboard a commercial flight, so its results should not be treated as proof that one drink will harm every passenger. Still, travelers with heart, lung, sleep, or other medical conditions should follow their clinician’s advice rather than assuming alcohol will help them sleep comfortably through a long-haul flight.
A Simple Drink Choice Can Make Flying More Comfortable
The takeaway is not that soda, coffee, juice, or an occasional alcoholic drink must disappear from your travel routine. It is that water makes a sensible default because flying already exposes your eyes, skin, nose, and throat to unusually dry conditions, while other beverages can bring additional sugar, sodium, caffeine, or alcohol. Start your trip hydrated, carry water when airport rules allow it, and take advantage of water service during longer flights instead of relying on one large drink near landing. For most travelers, the best drink on a plane turns out to be the simplest item on the beverage cart.
What do you usually order when the flight attendant reaches your row, and would knowing these numbers make you switch to water more often? Share your experience in the comments.
