As a kid I used to take the 36-hour QF 1 from Melbourne to London (70s/80s). Melbourne, Sydney, Singapore, Bombay (as it was at the time), Bahrain, Frankfurt, London. The only in flight entertainment was a few channels you heard through a pair of plastic tubes you stuck in your ears (no joke). Each channel was only an hour or so long so it got repetitive, but you did manage to read a lot of books. Oh yeah and of course there was smoking on the plane.
Currently it's a 24 hour flight with only a single stopover, in Bangkok.
One thing I've begun to dislike is that traditional IFE had polarising or directional filters so you couldn't see the screens of seats around you. iPads being used on some flights now don't so you see a sea of screens and in some cases some movies could flash quite some bright light from long away.
But now a resent plane I was on (I forget with who) the inbuilt IFE also didn't have these directional filters which was really annoying as you could see basically every seat beaming into the dark cabin.
IFEs seem pretty popular still on long haul. On short haul they were always a bit useless. I'm a big fan of the recent trend to have mains power points in the seats so you can use your laptop or what have you.
Qantas are doing streaming in an app for some domestic planes now (pretty much all the ones that hadn't got the upgrade to the seat-back screens - all their planes that fly international have screens though). It's actually really good - an iPad has a way better quality display than anything I've ever seen in a seatback and the content library is larger if anything. All they have to provide is a USB charging port and a thing sewn into the seat that you can hook most cases over.
I really wonder how much of a demand there is for this.
So usually once a year (maybe twice) I fly from New York to Perth. By distance this is one of the longest journeys. Perth is a few hundred miles from the antipode of NYC. I have the "advantage" that I can fly in pretty much any direction. The two major options for a single stop are via the Middle East or over the Arctic to Hong Kong. There might be other options through say South Korea or Japan but I don't think any airlines fly direct from Perth to these. Oh and I think China Southern can do it via China.
Anyway. this amounts to roughly 24 hours (total) in aircraft time. I'm 6'2" and wider than a coach seat so this would be torture. I am fortunate enough to be able to afford a premium cabin so it's one of the things I choose to spend money on. This might mean paying 3x as much for a flight. I don't care.
Anyway, a big problem with even longer haul flights is the added cost of carrying the fuel you need for those last few thousand miles. I think Qantas estimated the per passenger cost of LHR to PER is about 30-40% higher than making a stop.
SYD-JFK is ~10% longer than LHR-PER, which will make the cost what? 60-70% more than going via LAX or DFW.
The problem of course too is if your final destination from Sydney isn't London or New York then you need to make a connection anyway.
So this is where say the ME3 carriers shine: ultra long routes with a single stop and a lot of options for city pairings.
Anyway, I'm sure someone will want these flights. I don't expect any direct NYC to PER flights anytime soon however. :)
As a Norwegian expat living in Melbourne, a single flight to London with a short hop over to Norway would be a dream. The huge stop over in Singapore or wherever is the biggest mental and physical drain. Would absolutely prefer this.
I've changed flight in Singapore or Bangkok a few times after a really long flight.
Had there been no security check it had been nice to take a walk and look at the too expensive wine in the taxfree shops, but the extra inconvenience of queuing for 30 minutes and unsolicitedly getting fingers down the front of your pants is surprisingly irritating when all you really want to do is to take a nap.
In one or two cases I had the option to stay in the plane, while they were cleaning, which was not bad.
There is definitely demand for major business hub to major business hub routes, the first and business class sections at least will be full. I spent the last two years regularly making flights like this, any chance I'd get I'd take the longer nonstop route. Fwiw, it's what the Boeing 787 was created for - longest possible nonstop routes bypassing hubs.
> if your final destination from Sydney isn't London or New York then you need to make a connection anyway.
England is the 'motherland', so is still a popular destination for some and for Brits wanting to visit the colonies.
I think the New York route might be harder to fill but I suspect it has more to do with carving out a new market for Qantas, as there is a lot of competition flying to California.
Do people actually talk this way? I live in England and I have never heard anyone refer to going to visit their family/friends/whatever in Australia as "visiting the colonies"
Its only a joke if you're on the 'white side'. Australia has local sovereignty, but not international sovereignty = thus, it is still a colony of the British empire:
You might like to consult a constitutional lawyer rather than indymedia. The Statue of Westminster and the Australia Acts conclusively separated Britain's sovereignty from Australia's.
This is one reason why section 44 has suddenly turned into such a landmine. After the Australia Acts, Britain is considered a foreign power.
That is not a good analogy. There is an independent board of directors who can keep checks and balances over Musk to make sure he keeps the companies independent.
Is there an independent board who can keep a check on the queen?
Only in so far as the moment a monarch decides to exert any unwelcome authority will be the moment they get deposed. Our monarch performs a ceremonial role as figure-head only.
You might call the independent board "Parliament".
True fact: Australians can't have an honest conversation about this. The reason is the Secrecy Act.
(Corruption of government starts with its secrets, and Australia has .. many .. that would startle its citizens into rebellion, which is what the political system of Australia is truly designed to police, not serve..)
Yeah, I am familiar with the Australian constitution (being a citizen). I don't get much further than Section 25 before the disgust sets in, and section 44 is a joke. (If you're a whitey - otherwise its just plain sad.)
Its Section 4 - giving only the Queen the right to select the Australian Governor General - that is the real issue, though.
And my local constitutional lawyer (a quite famous one, whom I know through a family connection), tells me "its a legal grey area with no finite position possible - sure, we have sovereignty on paper, but we are still governed by the Queen in practice..."
The Constitution is interpreted under Constitutional law, as stated by the High Court. It can only be applied in the context of that legal meaning, which is not the same as a reading by an interested but untrained citizen.
> we are still governed by the Queen in practice...
I feel as though you may be misquoting your famous family connection.
In a constitutional crisis, do you sincerely think the High Court would say "oops, I guess we're the personal colony of a Queen who suddenly upended hundreds of years of Parliamentary Supremacy somehow"?
If you know a bookie who'll lay odds, I'll happily take this wager.
Do you wanna debate that we're in the Coalition, currently destroying the middle east, willingly, for example?
>we're the personal colony of a Queen who suddenly upended hundreds of years of Parliamentary
We're locally sovereign, but not internationally sovereign. Even our own courts have admitted this - but of course, its not for the Australian people to know this, or even have any power to do anything about it. After all, we're all just struggling to be able to afford cool shit.
> All I know is when the UK barks, we come running.
'K' and 'S' are about 50 years apart on my keyboard.
> We're locally sovereign, but not internationally sovereign.
The majority in Sue v Hill conclusively ruled that Britain is a foreign power. It has not been overturned and it never will. There is no Imperial Crown.
There are Crowns, which are legally distinct. The Prime Minister of the UK cannot advise the Crown in right of the Commonwealth of Australia; an Australian Prime Minister cannot advise the Crown in right of the United Kingdom; the Premier of New South Wales cannot advise the Crown in right of Victoria and so on.
I wouldn't think it would be 20% slower; that would be going from 850km/h down to 680km/h. The big problem isn't so much that it is much slower but in fact the slower speed meaning a higher angle of attack which leads to more drag. At altitude commercial jet liners fly at a set angle of attack to reduce drag, so maybe flying a few percent slower might lead to less fuel usage, but more than that and the increased drag eats away at the savings.
22 or 26 hours of flying doesn't really make a difference.
If someone reinvented supersonic flight, and gave it a 20.000 km range, then that would be absolutely fantastibulastic!
That would be about 3x the range of Concord, so I guess it will never happen. Boom claims to be working on a 40 seat plane with a long range, but I doubt there would be any economy in that.
Deep vein thrombosis is already a problem on 10+ hour flights.
They really should have small gyms with bookable time (just a exercise bicycle maybe)
I've done the Sydney/Europe route quite a few times. The break in Asia does help; just to have a one hour walk around. As does first class! (did it once)
I flew with China Eastern from SYD to FRA with stop in Shanghai. They did exercise programs for the whole cabin twice on each flight. I've never seen that before but it was certainly helpful!
I got a DVT on a flight from Saigon -> NYC. Fell asleep for 9 hours with my leg folded under me.
DVT is gone now, but still dealing with the repercussions. I ended up getting Schamberg's disease as a side effect of Xarelto, so both of my legs look like they're covered in a rash. I have some vascular inefficiency issues in my left leg that become prominent if I sit for more than 30 minutes.
Getting up and walking around the cabin mitigates that. I usually walk several laps from front to back every few hours, and it's not an issue because most people tend to be asleep.
Agree. It's an interesting technical challenge to ask for planes that can fly these long routes at present speeds, but I think we're solving the wrong problem. The problem is speed, not fuel efficiency.
Can't really go faster because we're already about 80% of the speed of sound. Going any closer to the speed of sound than that dramatically increases drag.
Going higher (for less drag) is a problem because it's hard to keep the engines running in the thin air, and on top of that, high speed also makes it hard to keep them running.
Until we figure out a new engine design, 80% of the speed of sound is about the max.
Military engines get around this by consuming incredible amounts of fuel - not practical for commercial flights.
Concorde was fuel-efficient as supersonic aircraft go, but the physics forces weird designs on you and you end up with, well, Concorde. Its cabin was cramped and not particularly comfortable, it cost much more than a regular airliner, and being supersonic didn't save enough time to cover the additional cost and discomfort.
That's why we're still at 0.8-ish mach numbers -- you can build those planes big and comfortable for the people who buy the expensive tickets.
Supersonic business jets seem plausible and the consensus seems to be that it could be a viable market if they could go supersonic over land. But larger planes seem a real stretch.
Really long-haul routes might be getting into the range where people would be willing to sacrifice some seating space/amenities for a much faster plane. But then you're into needing much greater range than the Concorde. And, while there are a few of these routes that are economically viable on today's aircraft, even EWR-SIN didn't ultimately work out for Singapore Airlines.
I can't find a source that doesn't involve doing a lot of maths but I think a significant proportion of the fuel used by Concorde was taxiing, takeoff and climb out. In supercruise Concorde used less fuel than an 80's era 747 albeit carrying ~1/3 passengers but also for ~1/3 of the time.
You just need a way to get you to 60000ft efficiently!
AAR (Air to Air Refueling) isn't really necessary for the civilian market, but is extremely important for the military.
Most people don't realize, but the range of a fighter jet is very small. The F-15 gets about 1500 miles of range (or 750 miles of radius). A 747 gets nearly 8,000 miles of range, so FIVE TIMES more range.
Also do you ever wonder how we get jets to Afghanistan? We literally fly them the entire way. After September 11th the Air Force had to set up something known as a "Sky Bridge". It's a network of Boeing Aerial Refueling planes that F-15s would visit, one after the other, to airbases in Europe, Turkey, Kuwait, etc. So F-15s were refueling 4 or so times on a single flight.
Other fun facts:
- Helicopters can do aerial refueling as well
- If you lower the amount of fuel in a jet, it can take off with shorter runway. This can be important in hastily set-up or even damaged airports, and the jets can then refuel aerially later
Does abc not proof read their articles? Missing punctuation, sentences that just stop...I'm actually surprised that article made it online in its current state.
I'm going to guess that because the article is rather old (from 2000 as far as I could tell) it has been copied from CMS to CMS to CMS over the years and some loss of fidelity has occurred. Anyway this stackexchange question may be a better source: https://aviation.stackexchange.com/questions/8885/do-militar...
Its very expensive and very risky for civilian flights. Either of those factors alone would be a no-go zone for airlines, put them together and its worse.
"Ladies and gentlemen, we are almost out of fuel. In a few minutes, the refueling aircraft will be making its way toward us. To enjoy the benefits of in-flight refueling at low, low prices, please have your credit card ready."
Even military flights, its mostly a theoretical exercise. If you have a refueling tanker based out of somewhere, you can just base the planes you are refueling out of there instead.
Not to say its worthless of course, but its not as useful as it might seem.
>> Pretty much everyone prefers a nonstop flight—business people, especially.
Is this true? I find it so hard to sit in the plane for such a long time. I don't think flying in business class would make too much of a difference because it is still way more constrained than outside a flight.
Modern business class is a different world. There's space to stretch out, kick back, sleep, food is often served on demand, etc. On more than one occasion I've found myself at the tail end of a 14-hour flight and wishing we weren't landing just yet.
Having flown Sydney to New York and back just last week, I would much prefer a single non-stop flight. Especially since on the way back I missed my connection in SFO due to bad weather and was stuck for a full day: all US West-Australia flights leave late at night, so if you miss one wave, it's 24 hours until the next batch.
Also, 20 hours seems like a lot, but it's only an incremental increase on the current longest flight (17:40 for Doha to Auckland, NZ on Qatar) or the previous longest flight (18h+ for Singapore to NY). The problem is really the economics and the rocket problem: to fly further nonstop, you need to carry lots of fuel, which increases the weight, which requires more fuel... The 18 hour flight was business class only with seats going for north of $10k return and Singapore Airlines still couldn't make it pay off.
While boarding a flight this week, I was told to wait (just entered the plane) because they wanted to serve orange juice to someone in business class. So me and some 10 people behind me waited until the air hostess served the juice and came back few mins later, because orange juice couldn't wait for another 15 mins. It felt very weird. I guess rich people do really experience life on a different level.
International upgrades still tend to require fairly substantial co-pays. Nothing like paying the whole thing in cash but still in the multi-hundreds of dollars.
That depends, I recently booked a "round the world" trip in first class with miles (total distance traveled 19500 miles and 5 different cities visited so not really round the world) and in total I only paid 400 usd in taxes and fees and 205,000 miles.
If you can get the miles from churning, I wouldn't say that the co-pay is particularly onerous, it's much less than it would have cost to buy all the tickets in economy.
That's pretty good. United is around $500 one-way for trans-oceanic upgrades to business plus around 25K miles. A pretty decent bargain over just buying a business class ticket but not a trivial cost either. I do it now and then but I'm selective.
I've flown company-paid business class flights that cost something like 5% of my pretax income. Who spends 5% of their income on a weeklong trip multiple times a year?
I typically decline the pre-departure beverage when flying up front, and honestly on a lot of US airlines these days it's inconsistent as to whether it's even offered. So both I and flight crews are trying to avoid inconveniencing you :)
Also, on international flights this won't interfere with the boarding process, because usually they either board using multiple doors (one for business/first, one for economy) or they board from a door behind the front cabin, so that people in first/business turn left to get to their seats while people in economy turn right. There are some studies suggesting that if people don't have to walk through and see the fancy cabin on their way into the plane, they get less angry in the economy cabin.
That said, yes, it's a very different world. I've done international flights in economy, and suffered. I've also done them in business class, and was fine. Getting a good night's sleep over the ocean, stepping off the plane into fast track through immigration, then into a lounge for a shower and a hot breakfast, makes the process not only bearable but pleasant.
And that's without getting into the ultra high end of airline travel (which is still well behind what you get once you're into private-jet money). Look up some videos of, say, Lufthansa's first-class terminal in Frankfurt. It's literally a separate terminal for the first-class passengers, with private security screening, private passport control, private dining and relaxation areas, and then they put you in a chauffeured luxury sedan and drive you across the airport to your gate, where you take an elevator up and board the plane, never having to mix with the economy-class passengers at all.
The middle eastern carriers are like this, too, and many go so far as to send a personal driver to your home or hotel to pick you up and make sure you reach the airport in time, and have staff who whisk you through check-in and security and into a private lounge to wait for your flight.
Currently Etihad has the fanciest in-the-air setup, with two different first-class "seats" on their A380s, both more or less private airborne apartments (one of them is literally called "The Apartment", the other is a multi-room setup called "The Residence"), with your own private butler, access to a shower in flight, etc.
Alternatively, he/she might have known that ordering orange juice at that moment would hold people up and derived pleasure from knowing that was occurring.
Flew Aegean Business Class earlier this summer. As you get off the plane, there is a bus waiting outside only for BC passengers. Economy is let off the plane once the bus has departed. Felt a bit strange yes, especially if you are alone in that bus. I don't mind being treated well, but preferrably not on expense of others :)
Yep. I've flown a few 14+ hour ultra-long-haul flights in business or first class and it's a pleasant enough way to fly. Key for me is to shower at the lounge before departure. That makes a big difference in comfort.
Since I started hiking and multi-day backpacking trips I've found it much easier to enjoy myself while being dirty (amongst other slight inconveniences like being hot, sweaty or attacked by bugs). Might not be ideal for those around me but I'm now more comfortable on long trips/flights even if I don't get to shower right before/after.
As well as the physical and mental benefits of being clean I find it also gives one a chance to get some much-needed isolation away from one's fellow travelers for even a few minutes. I quite enjoy flying - am about go from Tallinn -> Frankfurt -> Singapore -> Adelaide - but interacting with people I don't know I find very tiring. It's one reason I much prefer travelling with my wife; our shared 'personal space bubble' when seated together is much bigger.
Am really looking forward to the shower in Singapore after a 12.5hr flight!
If you are in economy you have seat neighbours - you have to ask permission to get up from your seat for example (or have others asking you). It happens occasionally in business class too.
Also, showers usually do more than just getting one clean. It could be psychological, but I find showers help me to relax, de-stress, and prepare me for sleep. Of course I'm one of those folks who shower before bedtime, so your mileage may vary.
It's in the paid lounge (you don't have to pay for entry to the lounge though). Definitely recommended as well. Or if you're there for long enough, try the swimming pool.
That depends very much on the kind of aircraft, and while there are aircraft for which this is true this definitely isn't always the case. Modern aircraft are miracles of efficiency.
Most fuel is used to haul the airframe, cargo and the passengers around, fuel is only a relatively small percentage of the total maximum take off weight.
For example, the A350 mentioned in the article has a maximum of 108 Tonnes (140K liters) of fuel on board and has a maximum take-off weight of 280 Tonnes. So no matter what the mix cargo/passengers/fuel is there will never be more than 30-40% of the take-off weight in the fuel, and a good chunk of that (5 - 7 Tonnes) will be burned just on take-off and another 5-7 Tonnes to get it to altitude. So fully 10-14% of the fuel will be gone after the first few minutes of flight, then once you reach cruising altitude the consumption drops quite a bit due to the reduced drag.
Consumption during take off and getting to altitude varies between about 2.5 and 1.0 times consumption at cruise altitude due to increased drag and the climb itself.
With that kind of penalty on a take-off and the required reserve on landing (which is usually dead weight, but which you will very much appreciate if you have to get to your first or second alternate) the overhead of a landing+take-off sequence is pretty stiff so non-stop flights have a good chance of being more efficient if the destination is in range.
You are completely ignoring the cost of cycling an aircraft, and that pretty graph is less than 10% spread from min to max efficiency. So no, you will not be better off landing.
Maximum efficiency merely indicates at which distance all parameters are matched most perfectly, it is not the distance above which one should land to take on more fuel to be more efficient.
Reduction to absurds is an easy way to prove that to yourself, imagine a flight of 3000 miles at maximum efficiency, and then one at 3001 miles at which you claim they should stop to take on more fuel. This clearly is not the case so there is something wrong with your statement.
Just to nitpick a little: The peak efficiency seems to be around 2500nm, and it's pretty flat between 2000 and 3000. Above 2500 nm, you have to compare to distance/2, since you compare between 1 and 2 legs. Example: compare the efficiency at 3000nm and 2*1500nm. The cutoff is slightly higher than 2500nm. But not far from 3000nm. Coincidentally London-NYC is 3000nm. So anything longer than that could be split off (if you don't take a detour to do so).
My sister used to work for United a couple of years back as ground crew at a small airport that flew directly to SFO. She always told me how notorious SFO was for weather problems, and would cause flight delays or cancellations day-to-day (multiple times a week) with only a couple of hour's warning.
SFO's issue is not "weather" so much as it's a combination of the local conditions and the airport itself.
SFO has two sets of parallel runways, and usually likes to use 28L/28R for arrivals. There are plenty of protocols for airports to do simultaneous landings on two runways parallel and next to each other, but (simplifying a bit) SFO has the slight problem of them being too close together to do instrument landings for both runways at the same time.
This leads to compromise protocols which rely on the ability of one plane to maintain visual contact with the other plane when doing simultaneous landings. But of course in foggy/cloudy/rainy weather, visibility goes away and SFO can no longer handle simultaneous landings on those runways, which basically cuts the capacity of the airport in half.
I've never flown business class, but I'm from Australia and currently studying in the UK. When flying home, I generally try to find a 2-stop flight, which gives 3 7-ish hour flights, instead of the 14-15 hour leg on a one-stop.
Me too :) often same price with Qantas to do PER-SIN-DXB-onwards instead of PER-DXB. And Singapore is the best airport.
Business class any day but 19hours non stop in Economy is pain for me. (Which the new PER-LHR is).
It makes sense for Qantas though it's mostly the only way to fly more long haul flights competitively because all the flights are too long like this. And saves you airport fees for the stopover.
> I find it so hard to sit in the plane for such a long time.
The 14.5 hour flights I have taken were certainly more tedious than individual 7 or 8 hour flights. But back-to-back 7 or 8 hour flights plus an hour or two layover is much more tedious. Whenever possible, I would rather do a single flight.
If you have multiple flights, there's always stress that you might miss a connection. And you can spend every flight worrying that you might not catch the next one. When you board your last flight, you know you "made it", you know you're gonna get to wherever you're going, and can spend the entire flight relaxing.
If you have a single flight, you get that feeling of being done once you board your first flight, there's just fewer opportunities for stress.
It appears I have accepted the usual stresses and matters of courses of flying as normal and in doing so have become a grateful sheep.
Then again, the times I've had to worry about missed connections are small and the rest didn't end the world; the worst I've had to experience is waiting longer than expected.
> What makes it more tedious, the sense that you're meandering around an airport in "dead time"?
Partly what henrikschroder said, but it's also the trip just takes longer with a connection. And after being on a 7 hour flight, I never look forward to getting back on another one. Also I typically have to go through customs and immigration in the stop between the two long-haul fights, so that adds a whole additional level of hassle that would be avoided with a direct flight.
Current longest non-stop commercial flight, Air India DEL to SFO, has been very popular and often operate at 85% capacity 6 times a week[0][1]. Air India is adding DEL to LAX non-stop next month. It's especially popular with elderly travellers, as there's no hassle of transit.
AI173 DEL-SFO uses a strange routing to produce a slightly longer distance than QR921 AKL-DOH -- literally, it's routed to be just 50 miles longer by distance flown.
But by time in the air QR921 is still the longest flight in the world (17 hours 30 minutes, compared to Air India's 16 hours 55 minutes). Five other flights also are scheduled for 17 hours or longer in the air: EK449 AKL-DXB; UA1 and SQ31 SFO-SIN; QF8 DFW-SYD; and AA125 DFW-HKG.
> It's especially popular with elderly travellers, as there's no hassle of transit.
That, and the fact that there are a lot of Indian elderly who make the Delhi-San Francisco flight regularly to visit children who work in the Bay Area.
For business, you are flying to make money. A missed connection due to a slight delay could turn it into a 24 hour delay, and therefore a missed opportunity to make money.
Of course, I don't know if the stop overs for refuelling involve a connecting flight or if you are put back on the same plane, so in those cases (where your are guaranteed a rest stop of no more than 3 hours) I can see the preference going ether way.
Many of those flights even with the same flight number often have you deplaning and transferring to a different plane. But not always.
The reason for this partially is old airline freedom laws. Because stopovers used to basically be required for all long haul flights in 70s etc you can "stopover" in other countries airports.
The rules around flight numbers are, in simplified form, that the airline can use a flight number once per city pair per 24 hours. This allows reusing a flight number -- possibly with a different plane -- on a later segment, which is a concern due to flight numbers being limited to four digits via legacy systems (airlines with lots of regional affiliate and partner codeshare flights literally risk running out of flight numbers!).
In the US, larger airlines often use a flight number twice a day -- once for a domestic flight and once for an international flight. For flights departing to international destinations, it's not uncommon for one of the inbound feeder flights to use the same flight number.
Also, for a foreign carrier, the rules are a bit more complex; they can make an additional stop in the US, and can pick up more passengers, but can't do much more than that. US federal law requires that transportation between two points in the US take place on a US-owned carrier. So, for example, Qantas flies from New York to destinations in Australia with a stop in Los Angeles, and can pick up more passengers at LAX and even change planes there for the onward journey, but they can't sell JFK-LAX tickets.
You can get up and walk around during the cruise phase. I vastly prefer direct flights, even for long trips. (For example, I fly Washington to Beijing every couple of years, and try hard to get a direct flight for that.) Changing planes adds so much time, and is stressful for international flights where you have to clear customs before when making the connection.
A non-stop flight means you only have to deal with CBP or TSA once, at the end of the flight. If you fly SYD-LAX-JFK or SYD-DFW-JFK you have to get off the plane at LAX or DFW, go through immigration and customs, go to the domestic terminal, go though TSA security and hope you have not missed your domestic connection.
Most major international transfer airports (e.g. Narita, Hong Kong, Schiphol, Changi, even Moscow) have nice air side connections that don't require entering immigration. Ya, they'll still security screen you, but it is much quicker than when initially broadening.
America is unique in requiring all passengers to go through immigration, but in that case they are usually going somewhere else in America anyways so it would be a port of entry. Sucks if you are transferring in Miami to go to South America, however.
And China is interesting in the other direction: certain cities in China allow multi-day "transit" without a Chinese visa, so long as your origin and eventual destination are two different countries. So, for example, you can fly into Shanghai from the US, spend a couple days there, then board a plane to Tokyo, and China considers it to be one long "transit" not requiring a visa.
Extended stay transfer visas on arrival are not uncommon. Moscow has this, as does Hong Kong for mainland citizens without entrance permits. So if you fly to Europe from Asia via Moscow and have an extended transfer Moscow, you can get a visa on arrival to see the city for a day or two, or if you are mainland Chinese and fly to Bali via Hong Kong, you can have a one day layover and see Hong Kong even without a Hong Kong visit permission.
You can add doha to that list, they often do security screens but not always... An hour has been hurried/comfortable connection time multiple times, even made 50 minutes a few times. YMMV.
The few 14+ hour flights I've been were more comfortable than the usual connecting flights I take for the long haul and ultra-long haul trips. Not sure if the longer haul flights have more comfortable seats even in economy but leg room and width were ample. They were all 777-300ERs. I prefer them over having to go through another airport (security) and chances of delays for the connecting flight.
I don't, even in business. I flew to HKG last week via Helsinki and Bangkok; not only was it cheaper because 2 stops but we had 1 full day in Helsinki and 1 full day in Bangkok which made my jetlag, landing in HKG non existing and gave us time to visit friends in both cities.
On a long flight I take a few walks, loiter in the galley area, get the blood flowing in the legs with a session of raising myself up/down on tiptoes repeatedly... Really seems to help.
I've flown SYD,BNE<->SFO,LAX,LAS,YYZ an uncountable number of times. I want Boom or some other supersonic flight much more than this. I'd happily pay the extra $$ for it, even if it's twice as dangerous as standard jets. That's still way safer than travelling by car. I hope they can get certified by the mid 2020s.
Let's get realistic, shall we? Any new jet costs billion plus USD to develop. This was even true for the Russian Sukhoi Superjet 100, even more so for the Bombardier C Series. And these were relatively minor adjustments over existing tech, not an entirely new design for faster-than-sound travel. If you consider groundbreaking planes, like the 787 program, that was 32 billion.
Boom, according to Crunchbase has raised $35.24M in 3 Rounds from 13 Investors. That's ... nothing. A rounding error in the budget to develop something like this. The CIA reportedly spent 3.7 billion to develop the SR-71 engine. And that was really long ago. What do you want to do with 35 million? 35 billion would be a much, much realistic number.
This is not an industry to disrupt. If you intend to fly in the UK, EU, USA, Australia then you need to certify with the FAA/EASA/CASA etc and you can't pull a fast one with those.
Maybe if the definition of "disrupt" is limited to swooping in, ignoring regulations, and ending up like Uber, at the top of a $50 billion industry only because the existing businesses were too successful at making the rules for themselves. Regulatory capture of taxi commissions lead to stagnation in the industry (and credit card machines that were always mysteriously broken).
However, the linked article discusses taking 20 hours to go from London to Sydney as this huge improvement over the status quo by shaving off 4 hours.
I mean, yeah, 20 hours and no layover is better than 24 hours with a stop, but the "disruption" there is to make a jet that goes twice as fast, and take 10 hours to get there instead of 20. That also (issue of sonic boom over land aside) makes it a 3 hour flight from LA to NYC, or 3.5 hours from NYC to London, or 45 mins SFO to LAX, if that's even enough time to get up to speed.
SpaceX has managed to "disrupt" rockets, lowering launch costs by $300 million/launch, with an architecture the incumbents had rejected with reusable 1st-stage on the launch vehicle, and for cheaper than the space shuttle cost (with the benefit of some advancements in technology since 1972). Their Series A round was $20M.
Reporting that the CIA spent an estimated $3.7 billion to develop the engines for what's still the fastest airplane ever at the height of the cold war era, is an interesting fact to mention because the SR-71 is a fascinating airplane, but hardly relevant to Boom's possible cost, since they're not bankrolled by a government who is fighting the cold war against the USSR. Tantalizingly though, the SR-71's reputed top speed was Mach 3.5. At that speed, Sydney to London would take less than 6 hours!
I would guess that's what HN says. I am, however, an ancient -- by the measures of HN anyways -- frequent flier who really likes the current safety record of commercial flight.
With Uber, it is understandable venture capitalists funded a fantastic trick shamelessly called "sharing economy", rolling back most advances labor achieved in a century. But with flying safety is too important for a similarly illegal company to get anywhere.
Or in other words, breaking the law gets somewhere with the taxi industry because they are relatively small and weak but good luck trying to break the federal regulations set by the FAA. Many tried to be creative already but they didn't get anywhere and that was just getting creative with existing planes. I will get the popcorn as you people try to disrupt the freakin' FAA -- and even if Thiel and the like can get Trump / GOP led Congress to intervene, there's the EASA as well.
For that's the really expensive part. You can build an app and release it (probably full of bugs) for real cheap and disrupt an industry (spits) but building a plane to such exacting standard as these authorities demand is a different world that techbros will find impenetrable, and, again, thanks God for that. And don't tell me they are not, here's the photo: https://boomsupersonic.com/assets/team-page-hero-photo-cdf15... there's a grand total of two women and one black man on the pic among, I didn't bother to count how many white techbros.
It always seemed weird to me that the Concorde was a British-French thing whose chief routes was between London, New York, and Paris. I would have thought there'd be huge demand for the long-haul flights across hemispheres, between northern cities like London, New York, Tokyo and Syndney, Johannesburg, etc.
There was a London to Singapore (via Bahrain) flight for a few years. But, in addition to having various restrictions because of noise (and not just over the US), the Concorde had a max range of about 4500 miles. So,it couldn't do a trans-Pacific route without refueling--which would negate most of the time advantage.
Demand slumped after the 2000 crash, September 11 greatly diminished air travel of all kinds. They were expensive aircraft to fly, so once the premium route became quieter, it wasn't economical.
There was then the Paris crash, and the increasing maintenence cost of an old plane. Had Paris not happened I suspect it would have hung on until 2008, but the added age would have meant 08 would have finished it off.
Qantas also holds the record for the longest duration commercial flights: the 27-33 hour Double Sunrise service between Perth and Ceylon during WW2. At the time they were also the longest distance non-stop flights.
Some years ago I travelled from Melbourne to Frankfurt a couple of times in a year. I took flights with stops at Singapore and actually liked the 2-4 hours break.
Similar here, I used to do Perth to Copenhagen via Singapore. I actually stopped flying Qantas & switched to Singapore Airlines when they stopped flying via Singapore.
One must ask whether there are health concerns when hundreds of people sit in economy for 20+ hours. Is saving four or five hours really worth the risk of catching something?
I moved from London to Sydney last year, and have flown the route via Dubai (on Emirates) three times now. Takes about 24 hours if you have a short layover in Dubai.
I'd gladly pay extra for a direct flight, because...
- 4 hours quicker
- An aircraft issue at Dubai can add a day to your journey (as happened to a friend who visited at Christmas)
- Changing at Dubai always seems to involve twenty minutes of walking, ten minutes on a train to go between terminals and then ages on a bus to get from the gate to the actual aircraft. Total PITA.
Stopping for refueling is Ok-ish, such as Quantas QF1 LHR-SYD which stopped in Bangkok last time I took it (heard that changed to Dubai?). Just walked into a gate and waited a little while the plane filled up fuel and beer. Then back to the same seat. Adding 3-4h is obviously not ideal but I wouldn't pay a large premium to fly direct compared to that. If I did it on a regular basis and was in business class it would be another matter, but can they really find enough such passengers?
By a perhaps unusual confluence of events, I live in London and work remotely for a Sydney- based company. I'd love a direct flight for my quarterly visits.
Always wondered why would anyone fly such a long distance without a relax day or two in stopover city. 10 hr flight than another 10. Even for few million salary i wouldnt want to be made to fly like this.
Because you're going somewhere and want to get there. Nothing wrong with a stopover day but there's a fair bit of overhead associated with clearing immigration/customs and heading into a stopover city for a day. If it's somewhere I really want to go, sure. But it's certainly not worth it just to break a flight up.
That's what makes me wonder. I feel so bad after 10hr flight that I'd rather spend a day in a city like Doha (unfortunately most stopover cities are also most boring middle-eastern cities). I mean I'm jealous - it's the reason I avoid long distance flights at all cost. Maybe business class is more bearable or there are special tricks like sleeping pills, dunno.
Certainly it's better in business though I don't fly that routinely.
If I have the time and the opportunity presents itself to visit a city I want to spend time in, I'm more than happy to. But turning a 20-hour flight into a two+ day journey with additional airport transfers, etc. isn't an improvement in my book. I can usually sleep a bit even in coach. And I just read and watch movies the rest of the time. I don't like it but I don't see the advantage of stretching it out.
For those in SF, in the past I tried finding the longest possible flight from SFO using an "opposite side of the world" website. It landed in the ocean, in the vicinity of Madagascar.
In a hypothetical world where the USAF was a mercenary force, could anyone besides the US government afford to hire them as they are now? It's hard to imagine a client wanting to pay $70K/hour for a single F-22, plus some mercenary markup.[1] I wonder how the USAF would evolve if they had to be completely self sufficient.
>> But right now, all the money in the world won’t get you from Sydney to the Big Apple or U.K. without a pit stop, because commercial planes just don’t have that kind of range.
This makes it sound like this long a flight is a physical impossibility today. However three minutes of searching leads me to believe a few commercial aircraft have indeed made a similar or longer trip. Not to mention any military aircraft that might do this as well, I'm sure there exists an amount of money that would get you on such an aircraft today :)
Not currently possible economically partially because of the weight restrictions you end up with and in some cases due to taking slightly longer routes to stay in range of other airports for an emergency (ETOPS). But it's changing fast, because PER-LHR which is about to start seemed crazy not that long ago.
The problem is the range can vary depending on the weather (headwinds etc) and you need a buffer (if you're left in a holding pattern landing). If you're an airline making a scheduled flight you're not basing it on "can this airplane make it" but "can this airplane make it once a day there and back through wind and snow"
Currently it's a 24 hour flight with only a single stopover, in Bangkok.