By his own admission, Eric Grosse spends half of his workweek in the clouds.

The co-founder and president of San Francisco-based travel reseller Hotwire isn’t mentally slacking off. He has meetings to attend around the country, in particular in Los Angeles, Chicago, and New York, and—since Hotwire was bought by Expedia, in 2003—Seattle.

While his routine might not seem extraordinary to veteran business travelers, this fact might: Grosse logs tens of thousands of miles in the back of the bus.

“It’s easy for top-level executives to get complacent when they travel and expect first class every time,” says the 39-year-old company president. “One way to let everyone at the company know you’re serious about costs and saving money is to have as few distinctions as possible between the senior and junior levels. And for us, that means I fly coach.”

Spending that much time in such a limited amount of space requires a certain level of endurance. But Grosse, who usually flies United Airlines, has also come up with some tricks that help him feel like a king in coach.

The first rule: Pack light. Because fliers greatly outnumber overhead bins in the coach cabin, Grosse tries to fit everything into one small, wheeled suitcase from Orvis. If he must bring a suit, he generally wears the jacket on the plane; he also tries to travel with only one pair of shoes. On short jaunts, he’ll eschew the wheelie altogether, opting instead for a Hotwire-branded duffel bag from Timbuk2 because he can stuff it under the seat in front of him.

“Economy [class] is all about minimizing space,” he says. “The less you bring, the less you have to worry about. And the less you have to worry about, the easier the entire flight will go.”

Another strategy: B.Y.O.F. (as in Bring Your Own Food). It’s no secret that airlines have been scaling back food offerings in economy class, and fare available in airports usually falls into two categories: premade or fried. The night before every flight, Grosse’s wife makes him a sandwich on fresh sourdough bread and cuts up some vegetables for snacks. Grosse also always brings along some fruit—bananas are a standby, and depending on the season he’ll pack pears or mandarin oranges as well.

“Particularly when you’re traveling, it’s important to make sure you’re putting the very best fuel into your system,” he says.

Third rule: Self-medicate. Because coach cabins are notorious breeding grounds for germs and viruses, Grosse always pops a Trader Joe’s Vitamin C tablet on the morning of a long flight. On red-eyes, he also takes a Tylenol PM tablet just after dinner, which helps him to fall asleep but doesn’t leave him too groggy to conduct business in the morning.

“The worst feeling in the world is when you’ve traveled all night for a morning meeting, but you spend most of the meeting in a fog,” Grosse says.

Finally, Grosse tries to maximize distractions. He rarely pulls out his tiny Dell Latitude D400 laptop during flights, preferring to mark up PowerPoint printouts and jot down ideas in a Moleskine notebook. When he’s finished with work, Grosse says he likes to “zone out” and read books. He generally prefers nonfiction and recently finished Doris Kearns Goodwin’s Team of Rivals. Up next: Three Cups of Tea by Greg Mortenson and David Oliver Relin.

Grosse says that he never leaves home without his new 16-gigabyte Apple iPod Touch. Before each trip, he uploads family pictures and videos, as well as movies from iTunes. The self-proclaimed opera nut has also crammed the device with more than five gigabytes of opera. (See his recommendations.)

“Most operas are a minimum of three hours, which means one can get you halfway across the continent,” he quips. In economy class, that kind of distraction can go a long, long way.