A350 cruise is 900km/h. So 22 hours. Add on ascent and descent plus general faffing about and you are close to the magic number.
Sydney London is 17,000km. Which is not too far short of the magic. Auckland and it creeps up to 18,350km.
If you can’t fly the great circle, things may get worse. Plus you need margins. So 24 hours is a good target.
(Many years ago in previous life I was giving a research paper in Burlington Vermont. I live in Adelaide Australia. That is 17,100km. They asked me for a few words they could introduce me with. I suggested that I had come from somewhere as far away from there as it was possible to get. Almost true.)
I’m not sure about the non stops. Friend of mine flys to the UK each year for a regular holiday. She loves the Perth London non stop. She was quite annoyed when this year it didn’t go non-stop because of the current Middle East conflict. She still has to fly Adelaide to Perth to pick it up. So I’m not convinced, but have never flown it.
Back when I did a lot of international travel it was always through major hubs. Adelaide London via Singapore became like catching the bus to work. Getting a break in Singapore to have a shower, change clothes, and grab a beer was really welcome. The real pain was the internal connections from London to my final destination. Same going through Dubai.
The biggest win is being able to select when in the day you arrive. That overshadows the journey significantly.
Airlines compete for slots at major airports, so the wiggle room for them to get you good arrival times becomes constrained. A nonstop may result in fewer constraints.
Exactly! Because there are three or four of us flying, we have to watch prices so my wife shops around for the best deals, which unfortunately involve additional layovers.
I’m not sure if this is Google watch what I post, but the a YouTube algorithm just dropped this in my feed.
A very nice analysis of the Qantas SYD LHR nonstop
Really interesting video. I’m currently planning a Sydney -London trip and the almost universal consensus among friends is that they would much rather a single long hop than one broken into two stages.
Probing further, its mainly a feeling that while you get to stretch your legs in Singapore, Doha or wherever, its often a stressy time if there is a plane change, lots of running around giant airports to find the departure gate, interrupts the bit of sleep you were just settling in to, and generally not adding any value. Get to London and then sleep off your jetlag.
Also I suspect its something that Australian travellers are culturally averse to. Because of our patterns of travel if we want to stop in Bangkok, we’ll stop for a week and do it properly, not a two hour cab-ride out of the airport to have a look.
No, it’s because it was made in response to the same news that initiated the revival of this thread. Video takes a few days to turn around so it dropped right around the middle of our discussion here.
Agree about that. But why did YouTube know that I would want to watch it? Of the tens of thousands of videos uploaded, it chose to put this one right at the top of my feed.
It isn’t the first time I have noticed this. I post in a thread here, and not long after the algorithm steers me to a relevant video. Sometimes not even a recent one.
Really not that much of a surprise it will do this, but it remains slightly creepy.
Changing planes is a bit more stressful, but a lot comes down to how well the airline and airport set things up. 2 hours is a bit tight. Usually airlines will try to avoid tight connections as delays can easily cascade into very unwelcome complications.
As I described unthread, we used to fly from Adelaide to London via Singapore. (This is quite a while ago.) The flight involved changing planes in Singapore. We flew up from Adelaide on a 767 (8 hours), and swapped to a 747 that had flown from Brisbane (with 14 more till London). And the reverse on the way home. The stop in Singapore was exactly the right length to wander into the club lounge, get a shower, change shirt and underwear, settle down for a beer, and then amble back to depart. I would take that over saving a few hours in the journey anytime. The pain of the journey is always going to be jet lag when we got there. And that can’t be fixed with a faster journey.
But other routes were purgatory. Same journey, British Airways didn’t use Singapore, and instead used Bangkok. Back then it was a much smaller airport with no useful club lounge and we arrived in the very early morning when everything was shut. No shower, no beer, not even a coffee.
You learnt quickly how to structure your journey.
Lots change when flying for business, versus holidays when still working, and for retirees. Your time and your value for money trade offs change dramatically. If you have the time, always break the journey. Done right you can avoid the worst of jet lag. But if you are time poor, it becomes a bad trade. Worse, if your employer is paying, you end up with wasted weekends getting over the jet lag, just in time to get back to work on the Monday. Those journeys made me vow - never again.
Obviously not all big journeys involve crossing many time zones. But most do. Structuring travel around times makes a difference.
I will confess I don’t remember. There were times when a delayed flight make it too tight. But maybe three hours. It was a simpler time.
Access to a shower varies enormously. Some airlines give access to lounges to high tier frequent flyers, others allow you to pay. Business class and you get access to a lounge. Some airports are good, and if you look there are facilities available to everyone - for a fee. I have sworn off international travel for a while, so this is all a bit out of date. The top tier airports are striving to make themselves destinations in and of themselves, so things will improve. OTOH, there is a real attitude that if you are travelling cattle class you are beneath contempt, and only there to make up the numbers for a little extra margin. The real money is made in business class, and the amenities provided reflect that.
Maybe it’s just me, but I think I can sense the different attitudes between posters here who are able to fly first or business class and are used to transcontinetal or transoceanic flights, and those for whom flying is less common and even getting an economy class ticket has to be factored into their budget very carefully.
I’m in between. I fly across the Atlantic regularly (about twice a year) for vacations. I fly domestically a few more times every year. I’ve flown halfway around the world a handful of times.
I’ve bought expensive tickets, and i usually buy cheap tickets. But not the very cheapest tickets. I don’t want to be bumped if the flight is over-sold. I want to board early enough to keep my carry-on bag. So i buy a ticket high enough on the pricing order to avoid that.
But i don’t like to drink, and the “more space” economy is enough room if I’m sitting. And there’s not really enough time on a flight from the North East to Europe to sleep, anyway, so the lie-flat seats have never quite seemed worth the price. I was most tempted flying to Japan, but of course that’s an expensive trip in cattle class, and it’s wildly expensive in business class.
My longest non-stop has been Boston-Dubai (14 hours) and I’ve done several longer flights like Boston-Bangalore with a stop in Europe (London, Paris, or Frankfurt). For the layover flights, I just made my way to the departure gate and grabbed some food and tried to sleep a bit. If you have access to a lounge it’ll make for a much nicer layover. Recently we used the TAP lounge in Lisbon for a layover and it made the second flight of the day much more relaxed.
I’ve heard such good things about Emirates but our 14 hour flight in economy was pretty awful. If we had to endure those seats for an even longer flight it would be cruel and unusual. At that point, I’m willing to jump up to Premium Economy or better just to make sure I don’t arrive at my destination a cripple.
I’ve been looking at non-stop flights from Boston-Tokyo, also 14 hours, and I’ve resolved that we’d have to pay for better seats. At our age it’s worth it.
My first really long flight was on a Northwest Orient (so obviously a long time ago) 747 from JFK to Tokyo en route to Nanjing. I think I spent half the trip walking in circles, up one aisle and back down the other. I told people I walked to China.
