Non-stop flight

A non-stop flight is a flight by an aircraft with no intermediate stops.

An ultra long-haul non-stop flight is a flight by a commercially operated airliner without any scheduled intermediate stop of any kind and route length using the higher end of the airliners' range. These flights usually follow a great circle route, often passing over polar regions.

Ultra long-haul

History

From 1943 to 1945 Qantas operated a weekly Consolidated PBY Catalina 5,650-kilometre (3,050 nmi) return flight from Western Australia to then Ceylon with average flight times of 27 h, the Double Sunrise service. On 1–2 October 1957 a Trans World Airlines Lockheed L-1649 Starliner flew the inaugural 8,640-kilometre (4,670 nmi) London–San Francisco polar route in 23 h 19 min. The L-1649A was the last of the Constellation series, and the ultimate piston-engine airliner in terms of range and endurance.^[1]

In June 1961 El Al established a new record for the world’s longest non-stop commercial flight at 9,270 kilometres (5,010 nmi) from New York to Tel Aviv with a Boeing 707 flown in 9 hours 33 minutes, after trying a Bristol Britannia in December 1957.^[2] In August 1967, Aerolineas Argentinas established their non-stop Boeing 707 service on 10,062 kilometres (5,433 nmi) between Madrid and Buenos Aires with a flight time of 12 h.^[3]

It was the longest scheduled flight by distance until the Boeing 747SP entered service in 1976: In April, Pan Am set a new record for longest non-stop scheduled flight with its 10,854-kilometre (5,861 nmi) New York–Tokyo route and in December the airline set another record with Sydney–San Francisco, covering 11,937 kilometres (6,445 nmi). In May 1988 El Al introduced its long-haul passenger flight from Tel Aviv to Los Angeles, completing its 12,189-kilometre (6,582 nmi) journey in 13 h 41 min.

Singapore Airlines introduced on 3 February 2004 a 14,113-kilometre (7,620 nmi) flight from Singapore to Los Angeles, scheduled for 16 h 30 min in summer and 15 h 35 min in winter ; 17 h 20 min in summer and 18 h 5 min in winter on the return trip. Then on 28 June 2004 began Flight SQ21 from Newark to Singapore following a 15,344-kilometre (8,285 nmi) great circle route within 130 kilometres (70 nmi) of the Geographic North Pole in a little more than 18 hours,^[4] while its return flight, flight 22, was a 16,600 km route over Asia and Alaska.

The cabin was laid out with an all-business class one hundred 36 inches wide seats, twice the width of a standard plane seat. Revenue wasn't high enough to sustain the service and these routes were cancelled in October and November 2013, respectively, after Airbus agreed to buy back the carrier's five Airbus A340-500.^[5]

Current

Since 23 November 2013, the longest non-stop scheduled airline flight is Qantas Flight 8 (QF8) from Dallas/Fort Worth, USA, to Sydney, Australia, and its return flight (QF7), 13,804 kilometres (7,454 nmi) flown using an Airbus A380-800 since 29 September 2014, and a Boeing 747-400ER before.

Future

Announced

On 28 January 2016, Emirates announced it would launch non-stop flights between Dubai and Auckland on 1 March 2016 with a Boeing 777-200LR. The 16h EK448 flight will depart Dubai at 10:00am local time, arriving in Auckland 11:00am daylight-time the next day, with the reciprocal 17h15 EK449 flight departing Auckland at 9:30pm daylight-time, arriving in Dubai 5:45am local time the following day.^[6] The flight will cover a great-circle distance of 14,200 km (7,667 nmi).^[7]

It will be longer than Emirates flight from Dubai to Panama City with a 266-seat Boeing 777-200LR announced In August 2015. EK251 is scheduled in 17:35 westbound, the return EK252 to leave at 22:10 EST (7:10 GST next day) and arrive at 22:55 GST (13:55 EST) the next day in 15:45.^[8] The flights were scheduled to begin on 1 February but were deferred to start on 31 march in order to receive codeshare approvals.^[9] The flight distance is 13,821 km (7,463 nmi).

On the same day, United Airlines announced a daily Boeing 787-9 service from San Francisco to Singapore non-stop starting June 1, 2016. The 16 h 20m UA1 flight and its 15 h 30m return UA2 flight will cover 13,592 km (7,339 nmi).^[10]

Envisioned

Miami International Airport is in talks with China Airlines and EVA Air to launch before 2018 a nonstop 13,922 km (7,517 nmi) flight to Taipei,^[11] and Qantas is considering a nonstop 14,499 km (7,829 nmi) Perth-London service on Boeing 787-9s, to be delivered from 2017.^[12]

Singapore Airlines will be the launch customer of the Airbus A350-900 ULR, the A350 ultra-long-range variant, to be delivered in 2018 and enabling the re-launch of the world’s longest non-stop flights between Singapore to Los Angeles (14,113 km or 7,620 nmi) and New York (15,336 km or 8,281 nmi), among other considerations.^[13] Seating is reduced from 300 seats in Singapore Airlines standard A350 configuration to 170 to allow for more fuel.^[14]

At the January 2016 Bahrain International Airshow, Qatar Airways announced it will add ultra-long haul routes between Doha to Santiago de Chile and Auckland using Boeing 777-200LR.^[15] The distance between Doha and Auckland is 14,535 km (7,848 nmi) and to Santiago is 14,430 km (7,790 nmi), both flights would take around 18 and a half hours.^[16]

Airliners

The longest range Airbus jetliner was the A340-500, capable of flying for up to 16,670 kilometres (9,000 nmi) with 293 passengers, and the A380 for any Airbus aircraft currently in production. The superjumbo jet is capable of flying for 15,200 kilometres (8,200 nmi) with 544 passengers. New airliners like the B787 and A350 enable new long range, smaller city pairs and open new network possibilities like the 1980s twinjets ( Boeing 767, Airbus A300, and Airbus A310 ) on transatlantic and some transpacific routes.^[17]

The longest range airliner is the B777-200LR which can cover 15,840 kilometres (8,550 nmi) with 317 passengers, to be replaced by the B777-8X capable of traveling 16,110 kilometres (8,700 nmi) with 350 to 375 passengers, announced on November 2013 and scheduled to enter service in 2020.^[18] It could enable economical non-stop flights on the 17,016-kilometre (9,188 nmi) Kangaroo route in 19 hours,^[19] or the 16,683 kilometres (9,008 nmi) Nouméa, New Caledonia to Paris CDG,^[20] like the Southern Cross Route.

Boeing is currently the dominant manufacturer in the ultra long-haul aircraft segment, with 24 of the 30 longest nonstop flights being operated by Boeing airliners such as the 777-300ER (14), 777-200LR (6), 777-200ER(3),787-9 (1) and the 747-400ER (1). The Airbus A380-800 is used on the longest and 5 others and the A340-600 on 1 (totals 32 as 2 different aircraft are used on 2 of the routes).^[21]

Planned long flights

Iran Air had planned a non-stop 12,222-kilometre (6,599 nmi) Tehran–Los Angeles flight, which never materialized due to the 1979 Iranian Revolution. It suspended in November 1979 its 9,850-kilometre (5,320 nmi) scheduled non-stop service between New York and Tehran, flown eastward in 11h 15min, begun after its 747SP delivery on 12 March 1976.

Qatar Airways commenced nonstop flights to Los Angeles on 1 January 2016, covering a Great-Circle distance of 13,367 kilometres (7,218 nmi) and taking 16 hours 25 minutes. This service became Qatar Airways longest flight, overtaking the 12,952-kilometre (6,994 nmi) QR713 Doha-Houston Route. The new flight is the sixth longest route in the Top 30 longest nonstop flights. ^[22]

In June 2015, Turkish Airlines announced that it would start direct, but one-stop, flights from Istanbul to Sydney beginning Summer 2016 after announcing direct flights in 2013 and abandoning the plan, to be followed with Melbourne, with Jakarta shortlisted as one of the stopover cities.^[23] However, the addition of stopovers means none of the legs of the journey would make the longest flights list.

Philippine Airlines is looking to replace its A340-300 with an A350-900HGW high gross weight version available from 2017 enabling non-stop Manila-New York without payload limitations in both directions,^[24] a 7,400 nmi (13,700 km) flight.^[25]

Exploitation

The length of flights using current operational procedures would still be limited by flight planning considerations including having sufficient fuel to fly against the wind, to avoid adverse weather, holding, an alternate airport would reduce potential flying distances, as restrictions like ETOPS are no longer a limitation with the A350 having a 370mn clearance and Boeing's 777 and 787 having a 330 mn clearance.

Along with the chosen cruising air speed, the time taken by a flight depends mainly on the speed and direction of the winds at flight level, which can result in a tailwind, headwind, or crosswind at various points of the flight, and the ATC route. Flights crossing the middle latitudes often encounter the jet stream, which typically flows in a general eastward direction. As a result, flights traveling from west to east often experience a tailwind and have shorter flight times than for flights traveling from east to west, which experience a headwind. Flight schedules account for this effect in an average sense, but when the jet stream is stronger or weaker than normal, or takes an unusual direction, large differences can occur from scheduled flight times.

Record flights

Focke-Wulf FW 200 B Condor of Deutsche Luft Hansa (model).

On 10–11 August 1938 a Deutsche Luft Hansa Focke-Wulf Fw 200 flew 6,400 kilometres (3,500 nmi) from Berlin to New York in 24 h 56 min.

In August 1989 the first Qantas 747-438 was delivered from Boeing by setting a distance record for a commercial aircraft by flying 18,001 kilometres (9,720 nmi) non-stop between London and Sydney in 20 h 9 min 5 seconds, creating publicity for the airline's "Longreach" services with the 747-400.

On 9 November 2005 a Boeing 777-200LR, dubbed the Worldliner, completed the world's longest non-stop passenger flight. It traveled 21,602 kilometres (11,664 nmi) eastward, as opposed to a normal westward routing for that sector, which is much shorter at 9,647 kilometres (5,209 nmi), from Hong Kong to London, in roughly 22 h 22 min.^[26] Aboard the 777-200LR were eight pilots including Suzanna Darcy-Henneman, Boeing's first female test pilot. Although the airplane seats 301, there were only 27 passengers aboard this flight. There were two Boeing executives; several Boeing 777 engineers; representatives from General Electric; and a dozen journalists from around the world. The aircraft belonged to Pakistan International Airlines, Commander Asif Reza, who was the senior vice president flight operations PIA, was in command and assisted by Captain Mohammed Ilyas Malik, designated as check pilot Boeing 777 in PIA, to fly the aircraft as Boeing's "Launch Customer", pending delivery of this very first plane to PIA, registered in Pakistan AP-BGY.^[27] PIA now uses the Boeing 777-200LR on their nonstop flights from Toronto, Canada, to Pakistan.

Competition

The route from New York City (JFK or Newark) to Hong Kong is the longest non-stop route in the world to be served by more than one airline: one daily by United Airlines and four daily by Cathay Pacific (a fifth daily Cathay Pacific flight from JFK makes a stop in Vancouver), for a great-circle distance of 12,990 kilometres (7,010 nmi) from JFK.^[28]

The routes served between Los Angeles and Sydney have five airlines operating non-stop flights: Delta Air Lines, Qantas, Virgin Australia, United Airlines and American Airlines. In terms of flight frequency, Emirates has eight ultra-long-haul non-stop destinations from its Dubai base: Dallas/Fort Worth, Houston, Los Angeles, Rio de Janeiro, San Francisco, São Paulo, Seattle, Orlando adding a ninth (Panama City) and tenth (Auckland) in March 2016.

Geography

Because Europe is at the centre of the land hemisphere, the distances from Europe to the largest cities in North/South America, Africa and Asia are not among the longest. The longest flights from Europe are to Buenos Aires (e.g. Lufthansa FRA-BUE, 6185 nm) and Santiago (e.g. Air France CDG-SCL, 6291 nm) in Southern South America and from South-east Asia (e.g. Garuda Bali-Amsterdam 6,564 nm)

The distance from Europe to Australia and New Zealand is longer than these flights but there are no non-stop flights between these continents. The world's longest direct flight is Air New Zealand flight 1, which operates between London Heathrow and Auckland International Airport. However, this flight makes a stop at Los Angeles International.

As of August 2015 all of the top 30 non-stop flights departs from or arrives at one of ten airports in nine cities in North America (Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Dallas, Houston, Los Angeles, Newark, New York City, San Francisco, Toronto). They operate from 11 airports eight countries in Africa, Asia and Australia (Johannesburg - South Africa, Abu Dhabi and Dubai- UAE, Doha - Qatar, Jeddah - Saudi Arabia, Mumbai - India, Guangzhou, and Hong Kong - China, Taipei - Taiwan, Melbourne and Sydney - Australia).

The longest non-stop flights currently running are not the longest city pairs theoretically possible. The longest routes possible are between antipodes, or points on the Earth's surface opposite each other with the Earth's center directly between, a distance of 20,000 kilometres (10,800 nmi) at the meridian. Other proposals include utilization of point-to-point sub-orbital spaceflight for the ultra long-haul distances.

Longest flights

The following table lists the world's longest non-stop scheduled passenger routes in distance order. City pairs may be served using different routings on the return journey, which may therefore involve different route length and journey times. Weather conditions, particularly the direction of jet streams, also have a significant impact on the time needed to complete the journey.

Currently scheduled (top 30, by distance)

For the purposes of this table, multiple frequencies operated by the same airline between the same airports is counted as one flight, while different airlines operating between the same airports are counted separately. Also, each airport pair is counted separately, even though some cities have multiple airports supporting long-range flights (e.g. New York-JFK and Newark-Liberty airports).

^† Summer schedule (northern hemisphere; austral winter)
^‡ Winter schedule (northern hemisphere; austral summer)

Notes:

Discontinued

Airlines and aircraft types for non-stop flights

The sections below gives two separate views. The first one lists all the commercial aircraft types used for serving non-stop flights and their currently scheduled and operating longest flight. The second section attempts to list all the passenger airline companies in the world and their longest scheduled non-stop flight currently in operation.

By aircraft type

The table below lists the current longest (by distance) non-stop flights operated by different types of aircraft. The longest Boeing 777-200LR flight is currently Delta Air Lines' flight from Johannesburg to Atlanta. On 1 March 2016, the longest flight on that aircraft will become the longest flight in the world, which will be from Dubai to Auckland on Emirates.

By airline companies (currently scheduled)

The table below lists international airline companies with their longest (in mileage not time) non-stop flight currently in operation. All airlines part of the big three alliances are represented, as well as other major flag carriers and notable airline companies.

Shortest flights

The following table lists the shortest (less than 100 miles/160 kilometers) non-stop scheduled passenger routes per airline.

Compare

• Direct flight

See also

• Domestic flight
• Flight length
• ETOPS/LROPS
• International flight
• Longest train services
• Flight distance record
• Mainline
• World's busiest passenger air routes

References

External links

• Understanding Travelspeak