The Longest Scheduled Flights - A seriously aching arse.....
As I fairly frequent traveller, I have often taken flights of 11 to 13 hours, normally flying from the UK to many airports in Asia, but I've always been fascinated by the mega long-distance flights.
Going back a few years, I stared up at the destination boards in Singapore's Changi Airport at their direct flight New York, Newark, a flight that took around 19hours non-stop. How in all that is holy can an aircraft carry enough fuel to power it at close to 600mph, 40,000 feet in the air at a weight of hundreds of tons for 19 hours?
The plane on that route was an Airbus A340-500. A four-engined sleek and beautiful piece of engineering which until 2010, when it was overtaken by the B747-8, was the longest commercial airliner in the world.
I have a real soft spot for the A340, I like aircraft with 4 engines. When they have just 2 engines they all seem to be much of the same, but four engines says to me; huge distances, speed, glamour. Unfortunately, it also says; huge fuel bills, and after legislation changes allowing two-engined aircraft to fly over the ocean for longer periods, the need of the A340, and the cost to run it from Singapore to Newark meant it was no longer commercially viable and the route ceased in 2013.
This however, wasn't the end for the ultra-long routes. It appears that the ever competitive airlines like to hold records, no matter how obtuse the goal and so the competition began to hot up.
Now things aren't always as simple as they seem. 'Longest flight' could be taken to mean the longest distance flown based on ground mileage between two cities, or it could be taken to mean the longest time in the air. It could also mean the longest timed scheduled flight including refuelling stops but for this exercise, we will stick with the most commonly used 'time in the air' records.
Firstly, a few honourable mentions to some long distance non-scheduled services.
The first of Qantas' new Boeing 747-400 fleet, the City of Canberra, set a non-stop distance record for a commercial aircraft in August 1989 by flying 17,016 kilometres (9,188 nmi; 10,573 mi) between London, UK and Sydney, Australia in 20 hours and 9 minutes. Quantas was publicizing the airline's new 'Longreach' services with the 747-400. Just 23 people were on board made up of 5 pilots, 2 cabin crew and 16 passengers.
Jumping forward to the 16th of June 1993 and one of my beloved Airbus A340s, on this occasion a -200, left the Paris Air Show and flew to Auckland, New Zealand in 21 hours 32 minutes. After a five-hour turnaround, then flew back in 21 hours, 46 minutes. This was the first non-stop flight between Europe and New Zealand and the longest non-stop flight by an airliner. The 19,277 kilometres (10,409 nmi; 11,978 mi) Paris to Auckland had 22 people aboard and five center tanks.
It would be another four years before this record would be broken when in 1997 when a Boeing 777-200ER flew 20,044 kilometres (10,823 nmi; 12,455 mi) from Seattle to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia on delivery to Malaysia Airlines.
On the 9th of November 2005, a Pakistan International Airlines Boeing 777-200LR stole the record for the longest non-stop passenger flight when it travelled 21,602 kilometres (11,664 nmi; 13,423 mi) east from Hong Kong to London-Heathrow in roughly 22 hours, 22 minutes as opposed to a normal westward routing, which of course, is much shorter at 9,648 kilometres (5,210 nmi; 5,995 mi). On this flight, there were eight pilots and just 27 other passengers aboard.
All the above flights had one thing in common, no fare-paying passengers, but that wasn't the case when in March 2006, a British Airways Boeing 777-200 made the longest commercial non-stop flight after being chartered by then UK Prime Minister Tony Blair and his entourage from Brussels to Melbourne in 18 hours, 45 minutes. Of course, it wasn't a scheduled flight.
So back to the present. The longest, proper, scheduled flight is proudly flown by Qatar Airways between Auckland, New Zealand and Doha, Qatar which takes 17.5 hours and uses a B777 but is closely followed in second place by Qantas' 17-hour route between Perth and London which launched earlier this year and uses a B787 'Dreamliner'.
But wait.....They're back. Hell yeah, Airbus and Singapore Airlines have announced that they are restarting their 19 hour Singapore to Newark, US route starting in October this year and using a new Airbus A350-900ULR (Ultra Long Range) poking a stick in the eye of Airlines who have names that don't follow normal grammatically correct rules!
Just testing....hopefully they'll have it painted up a bit before October!
They do this due to modifications of the fuel system allowing them to carry and additional 24000 litres of fuel, and thus increasing their flying time to over 20 hours.
Unfortunately, it looks as though I won't get a chance to fly this route either as the service is being run as a premium service with just 67 business passengers and 94 premium economy passengers.
The current best price I can find on Expedia is $2223 USD....thats a lot of shitposts :-(
It's great to see that even in this technologically advanced age, there are still records that are simply about speed and duration still to be broken, raw competitiveness that drives us all forward, and in this case, evoking some of the old romanticism and glamour of air travel in an age of pile 'em in and keep it cheap airline economics.
Wow, I'm reading about planes now, what's happening to me, I'm being drawn into the netherworld of Steemit! Like you say, a bit different to the world of easy jet short haul flights with a forty minute turnaround time before they take off again.
That last airbus looks beautiful. I went to Duxford Air Show one year and looked round the museum - amazing collection of air vehicles including concorde and a superfast plane that looks a bit like a black slug for, well, spying, I guess. I found the world war two stuff harrowing, terrible flying conditions, horribly vulnerable, it's a wonder any of those young men came back at all.
I notice that this plane and the one you were on had those tilted wing-tips - is that a feature of these large planes only?
Well theyre called shark fins or winglets, the latest ones are blended into the wing but older aircraft had them retro-fitted. They reduce drag on the wing tips by minimising the vortices. Its been a long known phenomena but its only recently that commercial aircraft have had them fitted after they realised what a significant amount of fuel they saved and how much they could increase payload. Your Easyjet A320s have them too :-)
Thank you for enabling me once more and its only fair as its needlework monday tomorrow :-)
Hope you're having a great weekend :-)
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Thanks for dropping by and you're welcome mate :-)
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It's funny to think of these flights in the context of what used to be a "long" flight when I was a kid (1970's). We lived in the West Indies for a while and used to think it extreme that there was a direct flight from London to Port of Spain, Trinidad-- 10 hrs 55 minutes (I grew up in Europe).
Yes mate, until I started travelling seriously in 2003, I had only done 7 or 8 hour flights down to the Caribbean and for me, that was like forever. To be fair, flying to and from Asia I often use Emirates or Qatar for a couple of hours break, but if I dont sleep the night before a non stop, the 13 hour flights don't bother me at all. I think the huge improvements in the entertainment systems help too.
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