Ultra-Long-Haul: The Evolution Of The World's Longest Route

Its actualy melbourne and sydney to london

Simple Flying ignoring Melbourne’s existence like 👁️👄👁️

I have flown long-haul flights a few times in my life, always in coach, the last two in economy plus, so a little more legroom and an aisle seat (my preference has long been aisle seat/exit row). The first time was in the late 1980s from Vancouver to Hong Kong (starting for me in Toronto) on Canadian Airways International (DC-10s) (which had been CP Air until shortly before my trip, in fact my ticket folder was still for CP Air). It was tolerable, mostly because of the amenities for being on an international flight, like three meals and free entertainment for everyone being included (I was on a group tour, so it was largely no-frills for air travel, which is why a U. S. tour group was on a Canadian carrier - for the fare.) The other downside was that smoking was still allowed in selected rows, and I was behind those rows, so the second-hand smoke was a problem for me, for 13 hours!

The other time was over 20 years later, late '00s, on United from IAD to Frankfurt and return from Munich. The B777 was great, and we caught a really strong jet stream eastbound and arrived in Frankfurt a little early, which was good since I did not sleep much at all on the overnight flight. This was the trip I had economy plus both ways and it worth every bit of the $97 upgrade each way, not only for the legroom, but for the fact that there were no small children in that section, since young families generally can't afford the upgrade, so I didn't have a toddler kicking the back of my seat and crying for hours on end (this was in December, so there were a lot of families traveling for the holidays, and they all went towards the back of the plane!). On the return trip from Munich, the local counter ticket agent must have taken pity on me, because when I upgraded to economy plus he gave me the aisle seat in the row immediately behind the crew rest area, which had a row missing behind it, so I essentially had unlimited leg room.

What I have always told myself when I start getting crabby on a long flight is that we have it so much easier than travelers in covered wagons did 150 years ago!

I recently did a Vancouver to Manila flight with Philippine airlines. It was 14 hours to Manila but the return flight was only 12 hours which was a good thing because i got food poisoning on my last day and it struck 2 hours into the return flight so i literally locked myself in the rear lavatory the whole trip and suffered 2 hours less. Oddly the route to Manila flies on a straight line across the pacific, but the flight back to Vancouver follows the coast of Asia/Russia/Alaska.

Great video.

Wouldn't fly on ANY of them as they are ALL Airbus products. The new one for Qantas with the "restructured fuselage" will be number one on the list of probable catastrophic failure potential. The longest flight I've taken was just SFO to Shanghai and that was way long enough to be crammed into a small seat for over 14 hours. I've had longer military ones but We had room and walk around time.

how HIGH do they fly for such long haul?
are they at the edge of space?

First class no problem. Economy...OMG

qantas do have a chance, but this is also matter if they can carry the passanger demand capaacity and economical needs. I mean 50 ppl on a 787 with max fuel, thats sounds alot for a handful of ppl

Amsterdam Schiphol taxiway Vector to runway 36L is also a long haul.

Honestly anything over 12 hours is just torture 😑

I flew LHR - CGK with Garuda Indonesia back in 2016 to Bali. I think that was 16 or so hours. Not sure I want that again. Haha.

If Qantas is prevented from flying over Russian airspace, then another 300 km needs to be added to that LHR-SYD leg to make it 17,320 km.

How will they be able to fly over Russia ? (project sunrise) ?

I wish I had the time and money to experience these flights. But just the idea of stepping on board in London and stepping off the same flight in Sydney on literally the other side of the planet is seriously cool.

I can't take sitting in the plane for hours on end. I like layovers, forces you to move and circulate your blood.

I suppose once you reach such long distances, variations in routing play a minor role. Because, truth be told, Qantas is not going to overfly Russia, that's for sure. So they will not be able to fly along the shortest route anyways.

I flew JFK-BKK when Thai had that route in 2005. 17 hours. It was rough.

tHIS WAS SO BORING...

I think the a380 was not a faliure just a bad timing. If it dropped in like 2022 it would be a huge success. But the pandemic did not let that happen. Many airlines passed on the a380 because flying was "not safe" back then.

I’ve done the SYD-DFW route more than once, and to be fair a few more hours in the air wouldn’t make much of a difference.

Have you heard that Philippine Airlines is now using Boeing 777-300ER from JFK-MNL flights non-stop, crossing Russian Airspace.

I flew china airlines b777 from taipei taoyuan aiport to germany frankfurt no stops

Almost 9200nm is insanity, but also amazing.

You need to not repeat distance in kilometers after stating them in nautical miles, especially relative to any form of navigation, which, of course includes airliners, or for that matter seagoing vessels. For either the only way anyone that actually does it ever states distance is in nautical miles. There’s a reason for that. It’s because one nautical mile equals one minute of latitude. But I would bet for you to know that you would have to get out from behind your computer and actually do some navigating on the ocean or in the air. It doesn’t matter which. But you need to actually navigate before you start quoting navigation statistics. Please shut up with the kilometers. It’s annoying at least to any of us who actually navigate anything.

Given how very not Z Singapore and Australia are, can they really rely on access to Russian airspace to run some of these long routes?

I just flew DFW to SYD a few weeks ago, flight time was 16 hrs 31 mins,I was in business class but even then I found it was just too long, I'd prefer to fly out of LAX in future

I've flown AMS-->GRU for the first time last week, and those 12 hours on a KLM 777-300ER were more than I can stand.

There are many such routes which can also add to the existing routes
1) Sydney (SYD) - New York (JFK)
2) Sydney (SYD) - London Heathrow (LHR)
3) London (LHR) - Auckland (AKL)
4) Bali Denpasar (DPS) - New York JFK (JFK)
5) Perth (PER) - Toronto/Montreal (YYZ/YUL)
6) Istanbul Ataturk (IST) - Mexico City (MEX)

Watching this video reminded me of submitting papers in college where I added a bunch of bullshit to stretch the word count to meet the submission requirements. You could have shave 5 minutes off of this video easily without trimming any actual content.

IAH to TPE during winter is exhausting at 15-16 hrs

The whole Project Sunrise prep fascinates me. Just because we can fly nonstop from Sydney to New York/Paris/London does it mean we should?

I would stay on a flight for years if I was in Emirates Boeing 777 first class.

I've done the SIN-JFK/EWR in PY on 3 return trips and the best advice I can give is to bring extra food and a seat cushion.

In PY, SIA only serves 2 meals (economy class standard and portions) and a snack, and for a flight rated 17.5-18hrs, that's simply unacceptable.

The seats have also lost much of their cushioning as they're being sat on most of the time in any given 24hr period.

I'm a little interested in Longest Flights with stops. What will that be?

I did Chicago to Hong Kong back in 2003 (?) and surely back then that must have been one of the longest flights available. Was almost 16 hours - I'd be willing to fly longer than that but not by very much.

I have flown AKL to DXB with Emirates on the A380 a few times which clocked in at around 17hrs 20mins and it was actually surprisingly easy 👍

Low density cabins are essential for such long flights. I’ll want to stretch my legs every hour or two if I’m not asleep. If I don’t have an aisle seat and the person in the aisle seat is asleep, that’s a problem!

The longest I’ve flown is Dublin-Dubai, which takes between 7 and 7.5 hours.

Given the restrictions on flying through russian airspace... i wonder if Ukrainian war will have to be resolved before Qantas flys LHR to SYD actually fly it.

Your Forgot Qantas Perth to London London to Perth! Its 17 Hours and 14,500 km. I know you were just reading the data.

I've flown YVR - SYD, which if I recall was about 16 hours. It's long, though better than any alternative if you're going that way.

You conveniently forgot air india routes

Everybody forgets that historically, MEA used to have the longest route on earth, it was from Beirut to Sydney Bey-Syd on a 747 nonstop, no one mentions it...

I twice flew from JKF to JNB in the mid/late nineties and both times it was a 747 and to be honest none of the flights I looked at had an Airbus jet involved.

If flying economy max is 6 hours for me, if premium I’d do 9 and business/first I’d be fine with 14+

I've never been on a long haul flight (only on inter-european flights) but I find the development of them interesting. Looking forward to seeing the launch of the London-Sydney route.