Ultra-long-haul flights return. Qantas wants to interrupt the record

Long flights are making a comeback.

It’s certainly one of the clearest signs yet that airlines are betting that the rebound of international travel, devastated within the Covid pandemic, will proceed to grow.

On Wednesday, Qantas launched service between Recent York and Sydney with a stop in Auckland, Recent Zealand, on Boeing 787 Dreamliners, as a substitute of a previous stop in Los Angeles. However the Australian carrier is specializing in even longer routes: Nonstop flights from Sydney to Recent York and London. Flights could clock in at around 20 hours, enough time to observe many of the Star Wars Skywalker Saga.

“You do not have to take your bags off, you do not have to transfer, you do not have a probability of misconnecting,” Qantas CEO Alan Joyce told CNBC on Thursday at a showcase of the airline’s latest cabins in Recent York. The airline estimates the brand new routes could reduce travel time by greater than three hours compared with flights with stops in other airports.

For eight years, Qantas has been working with sleep scientists who’ve studied passenger moods, sleep patterns and food intake in hopes of limiting the impacts of jet lag on super-long flights, with test runs in 2019. They found that delaying meal service and keeping passengers awake longer with cabin lights help to fight the impacts of jet lag after they arrive at their destination.

Qantas is planning to operate the brand new nonstops on ultra-long-range Airbus A350-1000 planes starting as soon as late 2025. They’ll seat 238 passengers, far fewer than the greater than 350 passengers that standard versions of the planes can fit. Qantas limited the number of individuals on board to suit more spacious seating and to account for weight and the plane’s range.

The airline has ordered 12 of the special planes.

“Qantas is the one airline wanting to do that. Because from Australia, we’re up to now away from all over the place that we will justify not less than 12 [of these] aircraft,” Joyce said.

The planes shall be outfitted with six enclosed, first-class suites that include a table for 2, a reclining chair, a 32-inch touch-screen television and a 2-meter (greater than 6.5-foot) flatbed. It should even have 52 business-class suites with lie-flat beds and 40 premium economy seats, in addition to 140 seats in economy class.

They may even have what Qantas calls a “Wellbeing Zone” that has handles for stretching, on-screen exercise guides and refreshments. Wi-Fi shall be complimentary, Qantas said.

Joyce said the airline’s international capability is back to 85% of pre-pandemic levels and that he expects that to completely get well next March.

Yet although ultra-long-haul flights are technically possible because of more efficient engines and aircraft, they face other challenges.

“There’s technical feasibility, after which there’s economic feasibility,” said Robert Mann, an airline industry analyst and former airline executive.

Singapore Airlines, for instance, launched a nonstop flight from Newark, Recent Jersey, to Singapore that took about 18 hours (times vary on account of winds and other aspects) in 2004, a bet on business travel and that customers between the 2 destinations would pay to avoid connecting in one other airport. In 2008, it offered reconfigured cabins that solely featured 100 business class seats on the A340-500.

But it surely discontinued the flight in 2013 because the carrier removed the fuel-guzzling, four-engine aircraft. It relaunched it in 2018 with a combination of business-class and premium-economy seats, pausing it throughout the pandemic and relaunching it last 12 months.

In November 2020, the carrier introduced what’s currently the world’s longest flight, from Recent York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport to Singapore.

Here’s a take a look at the world’s longest flights by distance, in keeping with airline data firm OAG: