Recently I heard that an airline had introduced the world’s longest commercial nonstop flight, or about 8000 miles from L.A. to Singapore.
Why does it take 18 hours? That’s an average land speed of only 444 statute miles/hour. Do they have to go that slow in order to conserve enough fuel for safety considerations, or is there some other reason?
Or did they mean that it’s 8000 nautical miles, in which case it makes more sense to me?
As it’s across the Pacific, maybe they have to take a round-a-bout route to stay within a certain distance of a landing location, for safety reasons?
Is it actually 18 elapsed hours, or are they figuring in the difference between LA and Singapore local time?
According to this article, it is 8000 nautical miles and I’m sure they mean 18 elapsed hours.
I clicked “Post” too soon…
This article says it’s about 18.5 hours LA-Singapore and scheduled at 16 hours Singapore-LA. The difference is strong prevailing winds. The distance is 7600 nautical miles.
Well if it’s nautical miles then that makes much more sense. The plane would be doing 444 knots, which must work out to around 500mph if not more. I don’t remember what a nautical mile is, exactly, but I know it’s over 6000 feet.
Because it’s head wind. Seriously. I bet you find the reverse flight is quicker. For comparison, I just looked up a Delta flight from London to Atlanta, also head wind. Distance = 4215 miles. Time = 9 hrs 40 minutes. Average speed = 440 miles per hour. In comparison, Atlanta to London is 8 hrs 10 minutes, which is 516 mph.
Don’t forget also that they will allow maybe an hour for taxiing and contingency.
Not an unreasonable time period.
1 nautical mile = 1.15 statute miles. So 444 knots = 511 statute miles per hour.
To give you an idea of normal cruise speeds, the Airbus A 340, and the Boeing 747’s have cruise speeds around 490 knots.
Factor in fighting winds while flying westward, spare time for taxi, airport and weather delays, etc, and possibly a reduced cruise power setting for maximum fuel efficiency, and that time frame seems right on target.
What is the precise route?
I flew from Seattle to Hong Kong only to discover that we flew up the North American west coast, over the Aleutian Islands, and south along Asia’s east coast to Hong Kong. The thought was that we would be nearer to land, I guess, In Case Our Plane Became A Flotation Device.
Perhaps it’s not a straight shot, but some kind of strategic arc.
The great circle route from LAX to Singapore. Due to headwinds, a flight might not follow this though.
Check out SmackFu’s link.
Basically, because the earth is round, not flat, the shortest distance between two points on a globe looks like a semi-circular route on a flat map.
Try it sometime with a piece of string and a globe. Pick a straight line between two points on the opposite sides of the globe (Hong Kong/Seattle would work well for this actually). Thenmove the string closer to the north pole and watch the slack in the string increase.
Now that Russia is Officially Friendly To The NATO Alliance, flights from North America can go over the pole to Asia. I believe that Air Canada now has a nonstop transpolar Toronto-to-Delhi flight that is four or five hours’ flying time shorter than the previous route, which could not cross the Soviet Union. But it doesn’t look shorter on the usual flat maps…
Wow! That mapper page is pretty cool! Here’s Toronto to Delhi transpolar (around 11 700 km). Finding the airport codes is a bit of a headscratcher though. Fortunately I already knew that Toronto was YYZ, and I got Delhi on the first guess (DHI).
It isn’t the world’s longest commercial non-stop flight. Auckland (NZ) to London Heathrow non-stop is 18354 km (11405 miles) and takes 24 and a half hours.
That’s direct but not non-stop. That Air New Zealand flight has a stopover in LA.
Hmmm… actually, Delhi is DEL, and Air Canada flight 51 does the trip in 13 hours and 45 minutes, which is only a little longer than my direct YYZ-NRT flights used to be (they now stop in Vancouver/YVR, and so take a lot longer).
To answer the OP, I can tell you that on aircraft that show passengers the ground speed, it is often significantly less than the air speed, for reasons given above. An airplane’s stats can necessarily only tell you the speed that the craft is capable of making relative to the air it is passing through, not relative to the ground.