Some stare at the in-flight magazine without ever committing to reading it.
Others take a nap until the tea and coffee arrives.
Not Justin Nelson. He does some of his best thinking up in the air. And he flies an awful lot.
He has 50-odd more flights on the schedule before he takes the big bird back to Australia in three months.
The 53-year-old Australian is moving home after a six-year stint in New Zealand and he will leave an indelible mark on the sport here.
Nelson has become the face of basketball since shifting here in 2019 to assume a role as general manager of the National Basketball League.
He joined Sky as an executive three years later and his role did not change much. Nelson was still promoting the league and innovating at every opportunity.
But he has seven grandchildren — two of whom he has not met — and it is time to return home.
He has accepted an executive position with the Australian National Basketball League.
"I absolutely love the country and I’ve really loved my time here," he said.
"You know, I think when I arrived here, being an Aussie, probably 100% of the people thought I was an idiot. I think over the last six and a-half years, I've got that down to about 91%.
"Certainly, a lot of what we've done here has been noticed outside of New Zealand and around the world.
"There's no doubt that that has helped lead to the opportunity with the NBL in Australia."
Nelson’s first opportunity to demonstrate his flair came at a dark time.
Covid arrived and the world, including sport, ground to a halt.
The obstacles in the way of holding the NBL in 2020 seemed impassable.
Nelson found a way.
The entire tournament was held in Auckland in a bubble.
He introduced an NBA-style player draft that grabbed a lot of attention. And although three of the league’s top teams opted out, the 2020 Showdown proved a hit.
"I look back at the 2020 Showdown and it was arguably the most challenging six to 12 months in my life, in my career. But it was the most challenging time in everybody's life.
"It enabled my flair for innovation to come to the surface and for everybody to see that sort of stuff.
"But it also showed how resilient Kiwis are to adversity and challenges. It wasn't just about the game. It was far bigger than the game.
"It was about keeping 84 players active and employed and about putting a product on TV.
"We were the first ever sports bubble in the world, and we came up with this draft concept for players that just created such excitement."
The league returned to a more familiar format the following season.
But Nelson had plenty more ideas.
"I got on to a plane in November 2022 on a usual commute between Wellington and Auckland. When I got off the plane in Auckland an hour later, I had developed Rapid League.
"So my mind is always ticking around innovation. It usually goes into hyperdrive when I'm sitting on a plane.
"I'm always thinking about how to do sport differently in order to engage more with fans.
"Whether they're viewers watching on TV or they're fans in the stadium, I always put those people first."
Nelson received a medal from Sport New Zealand for getting the league up and running during Covid and he is also very proud of the Rapid League.
But what he is most proud of during his stint in New Zealand is getting the Tauihi Basketball Aotearoa League up and running in 2022.
It is a semi-professional league for women.
"Girls and women in New Zealand now have a great level of competition to aspire to, to play in, to earn money, to use as a springboard to go on and play right around the world.
"That is what I'm proudest of — building something from scratch with no government money, no Sport New Zealand money, not a cent's been put into it. It's all been self-generated.
"I hope that I can sit home in Melbourne years from now and see Kiwi talent on the floor in the WNBA, or players plying their trade right around the world because they have their own pro league in New Zealand."
When you innovate like Nelson does, there is always some push back.
The Rapid League had some detractors, at least initially.
"When you bring things like the Rapid League to the Sals’ NBL, which has a history of 40-plus years, there are always people that fear change and want the game to be the same way that it was in the ’80s and ’90s.
"You go and talk to people now about Rapid League, those that were vehemently against it have completely transformed into people who support it and love it because it's delivering so many benefits to the players, to the sponsors, to the fans, the viewers, everyone."
While the Rapid League may have won over most of its critics, the decision to include an Indian team in the NBL was bewildering for some.
And when some of their players were delayed in getting to New Zealand, then-coach Miles Pearce had to scramble a team together for the Indian Panthers’ season-opening encounter.
Nelson, ever the optimist, stands by the call.
"I think for those that hold criticism, I hold optimism and excitement.
"It is so left field and outside the box.
"But if we pick up half of 1% of Indian viewership, it's 7.5 million people. That’s 50% greater than the population of New Zealand.
"That's half of 1%.
"If we have one sponsor join from India or one sponsor from New Zealand, or we have an Indian player who goes on and plays in the NBA and they started in New Zealand, all of those things are in the vision of where we're going to.
"This is step one. Come and talk to me when we're at step 100. Then we'll be able to assess whether it's worked or not."
Adding a team adds expense, though. The NBL regular season is now 22 games — 11 on the road, which means a larger bill for accommodation and travel.
Growth can bring pain. It puts teams under financial pressure, which raises the perennial question of sustainability.
The salary cap for the NBL — believed to be about $175,000 — is set by the teams "so the beauty of doing that is they understand their business and their sustainability".
"However, the biggest pot of money available in New Zealand sport, whether it's basketball, rugby, cricket, netball, or any sport in New Zealand, is in the pockets of the fans.
"What basketball is doing well and increasingly better, I think, than most other sports is it's putting on a great entertainment product which is geared towards under-35s.
"That's our market. And the more that we can continue to engage with those under-35s and continue to put on a great product, the fans will continue to grow."
That brings the interview neatly to the Otago Nuggets and the Southern Hoiho.
Their Australian owners, SEN Teams, have decided to walk away. They have surrendered the playing licence for the Hoiho and they will surrender the Nuggets playing licence at the end of this season.
Nelson said that was not a result of the rising costs to compete in the leagues, but a result of SEN changing its business model.
He spent a couple of days in Dunedin last month and felt confident someone would step in for SEN and take on the teams.
"The good news is I've been here on a two-day stretch and I've been involved in back-to-back meetings with people who are interested and keen to be involved with the Nuggets and the Hoiho.
"The interest that these two franchises have from the community down here and prominent business people is very, very high.
"So I head away on a plane tomorrow and I'm buoyed with confidence that we've got some good things coming up in the future."
