Qantas hopes to schedule the world's longest nonstop flight in commercial travel aviation with a 20-hour flight from Sydney to London — that is if Boeing or Airbus can actually create a plane that can carry passengers continuously for that long.
Qantas, based in Australia, has promised to add the routes within the next five years, USA Today reported. The airline has already announced a 17-hour, 9,010-mile nonstop flight from Perth to London, making it one of the longest continuous flying routes in the world and the first nonstop from Australia to Europe.
A source told Reuters that Qantas' Sydney-to-London flight will take a northern polar route on most days rather than the usual western crossing over Asia and Europe.
The polar route is longer than the 9,200 nautical miles western route but benefits from a strong tailwinds rather than powerful headwinds on a more direct western route, the wire agency reported.
"The smart way is not to fight the winds. Use them," Leeham Co analyst Bjorn Fehrm said in a note to clients speculating about a 10,000-nautical-mile polar route in June, Reuters noted.
The Qantas planes would greatly expand the capabilities of commercial airlines flying nonstop. Emirates currently has the distinction of having the longest nonstop flight by distance, with its daily flight to Auckland, New Zealand, taking 16 hours outbound and 17 hours and 15 minutes on the return flight, according to CNN.
The longest current route in relationship to distance is the Air India flight to San Francisco, which travels 9,408 miles, via a Pacific Ocean route rather than the polar route it used to take, according to CNN. The network stated that the new route takes advantage of high-altitude jet stream, giving it a tailwind boost all the way to San Francisco.
That means while it takes about 1,000 more miles to fly, the trip actually shaves two hours off the journey at 15 hours.
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