The Strategist

Australian Quantas successfully completes world's longest flight



10/21/2019 - 10:00



The Australian airline Qantas successfully completed a historic non-stop flight from New York to Sydney.



Simon_sees
Simon_sees
The test flight of the new Boeing 787-9 Dreamliner took 19 hours and 16 minutes, during which the aircraft covered 16,200 km. The plane was completely loaded, but did not carry cargo, there were only 50 passengers on board - mostly airline employees. The purpose of the flight was to study its possible impact on pilots, crew and passengers.

According to CNBC, the volunteers kept a journal two weeks before the flight and two weeks after it, recording how they sleep and eat. On board, the crew and passengers did yoga and physical exercises. Two pairs of pilots replaced each other; they wore head sensors that tracked brain activity. Physiologists intend to use the data to facilitate jetlag (syndrome of changing time zones).

The flight will become the longest commercial flight in the world. No airline in the world performs such a flight.

Head of Qantas Alan Joyce joined the passengers on the test flight board. He noted that the fuel remaining at the time of landing would have been enough for another 70 minutes of flight.

Qantas plans to conduct a non-stop test flight from London to Sydney and, based on its results, decide whether to include such a route in its schedule. Such a flight may appear in late 2022 - early 2023.

According to The Guardian, the demand for air travel is growing steadily, so carriers are increasingly focusing on ultra-long flights. The International Air Transport Association (IATA) expects that the number of air passengers per year will increase from the current 4.6 billion to 8.2 billion by 2037.

source: theguardian.com