The longest flight in history: Passengers
do yoga and eat spicy food to keep them
awake, while pilots have their brainwaves*
Daily Mail [Australia],
by
Charlotte Karp
&
Thomas Duff
Original Article
Posted By: MissMolly,
10/20/2019 5:36:57 AM
Qantas made history after its longest non-stop commercial flight from New York successfully touched down in Sydney on Sunday morning.
The test flight, done under Australian commercial airline group Qantas, took off from the JFK airport at 9.27pm on Friday and landed in Sydney at 7.33am on Sunday.
Passenger numbers were largely made up of Qantas employees as numbers intentionally restricted to minimise the weight on board the Boeing 787-9 plane.
The plane travelled the 10,200 miles without refuelling - a feat achieved by no other plane.
Reply 1 - Posted by:
CecilStrange 10/20/2019 6:46:22 AM (No. 212344)
I used to take the direct flight from Newark to Singapore. 17+ hours going there and more like 20 coming back. I'd walk the terminal for better than an hour ahead of the flight and board somewhat late (all business class flight). You must sleep and you must get up and move around. Eat 5 times, and sleep, and watch a couple movies, sleep, read a book, and have a beverage -- and still have 8 hours to go. Grueling but better than changing planes in Paris.
5 people like this.
Reply 2 - Posted by:
hoosierblue 10/20/2019 8:03:08 AM (No. 212377)
If they are going to do a test, why not do it honestly. Plane completely filled with passengers with the seats of a cattle car. Dried out food or wrapped up crackers. lines at the rest rooms. Screaming babies, overweight people who take up two seats, and comfort animals. Etc!
24 people like this.
Reply 3 - Posted by:
Blue-Z-Anna 10/20/2019 8:14:21 AM (No. 212386)
Spicy food keeps you awake ?
No....no.....it burns your mouth.
Meth-amphetamine keeps you awake.
Important not to confuse the two.
(...and these people fly airplanes ?)
0 people like this.
Reply 4 - Posted by:
bpl40 10/20/2019 8:32:59 AM (No. 212409)
Have you flown coast to coast in economy on almost any US airline? Feels exactly like that!
4 people like this.
Reply 5 - Posted by:
Bur Oak 10/20/2019 8:51:03 AM (No. 212431)
The writer forgot about the plane that flew around the world non-stop without refueling.
0 people like this.
Reply 6 - Posted by:
GO3 10/20/2019 9:36:41 AM (No. 212486)
Rarely had a problem changing planes in Paris. Charles de Gaulle airport was clean and well run, and better than several large US airports.
1 person likes this.
Reply 7 - Posted by:
Strike3 10/20/2019 9:56:17 AM (No. 212508)
I've already had the longest flights in history just going to Chicago, Pittsburgh or Philadelphia. You get off the plane, tired, cramped up, irritated and without your luggage only to listen to the airline's excuses why it's not their fault and they do not owe you a free ticket. No more.
1 person likes this.
Reply 8 - Posted by:
DVC 10/20/2019 11:52:00 AM (No. 212626)
Interesting but the claim (complete with two misspellings):
"The plane travelled the 10,200 miles without refuelling - a feat achieved by no other plane."
Is absolutely untrue.
The Rutan Voyager aircraft, designed and built by Burt and Dick Rutan flew around the world, well over 26,000 miles unrefueled with a crew of Dick Rutan and Jeana Yeager. I know Burt Rutan and a number of the participants in this program, and spent some time visiting the hangar when they were building the aircraft and it was entirely unknown to the public. It was an amazing low budget accomplishment by some brilliant engineers, builders and pilots working together. This aircraft had two piston engines and it took 9 days to complete the flight.
A few years later, another aircraft designed by Burt Rutan and built by Rutan's company, Scaled Composites, was flown around the world solo, by Steve Fossett, who launched and landed at the airport in Salina, Kansas. This was a jet aircraft, and it took 3 days to circle the globe. This was a much larger budget operation, funded by Branson's Virgin Group. This made the initial connection which eventually resulted in Virgin funding and building the soon-to-haul-passengers Virgin Galactic space tourism system and company.
So, it is a doubly false claim.
Perhaps if they qualified their claim with "commercial passenger aircraft" it would be true. As it is stated
"....by no other plane.", it is absolutely untrue.
2 people like this.
Reply 9 - Posted by:
zzzghy 10/20/2019 12:23:44 PM (No. 212657)
Interesting, and testing is always a good idea.
A dedicated test flight with 50 volunteers is one thing and was probably kind of exciting; a fully-booked 20-hour regularly-scheduled flight replete with screaming diaper-loading babies, drunk a-holes, body odor and a cornucopia of crazed hairless monkeys is another.
The experimenteers are said to have saved "up to" four hours by flying direct.
Not worth it, but that's just me. Nonstop from SoCal to NYC is bad enough.
2 people like this.
Reply 10 - Posted by:
SnowQueen 10/20/2019 2:55:37 PM (No. 212750)
Our bodies aren't designed to be strapped into a chair for hours on end. Neither are our minds.
2 people like this.
Reply 11 - Posted by:
DVC 10/20/2019 11:58:33 PM (No. 213075)
#10, my wife and I flew to South Africa a while back in economy. VERY short seat pitch on South African Airways, and the flight was well over 17 1/2 hours, but did require a fuel stop (we could not leave the aircraft) in the Cape Verde Islands. Atlanta to Jo-burg.
Except for the unrefueled part, this isn't much longer.
0 people like this.
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* monitored on 19 hours and 16 minute service from New York to Sydney