Washington to Beijing: about 12 hours over, 12 1/2 hours coming back
My great aunt once a nonstop flight that lasted nearly 3 days.
She was coming back from a study abroad program in Germany and opted to fly back instead taking an ocean liner. She flew on the LZ-129 Hindenburg. 
She told me it quite nice, much more comfortable than the jetliners she later flew on. The only thing she complained about was the aluminum piano, which sounded horrible.
I flew from DC to Johannesburg, which Wiki listed at 17 hours, but it didn’t feel that long. From Jo’burg to DC, that was torture. There’s a refueling stop in Dakar, but the total time in the same seat is something around 19 hours.
Another flight that sticks out as being very long was a BA flight from Hong Kong to London. I see that it is only 13 hours or so, but the entertainment system at my seat didn’t work.
I’ve made various trips between DC and Tokyo, Seoul, Dubai, and a few other places before. In general, these flights tend to have nice amenities, and that helps.
When I did LAX to Auckland, it was about 14 hours. I got smart, though - I flew Atlanta-Memphis-LAX the night before, and spent the night in LA, before I got on the Qantas flight.
The return trip, however, was Auckland-LA-Memphis-Atlanta, and the only thing that made it endurable was that the LA-Memphis and Memphis-Atlanta flights were almost empty, so I had a whole row of seats to myself.
LAX to Auckland was tough, but the Orlando-Charlotte-Munich/Berlin-Frankfurt-Orlando trip I took in early July was worse: seated in the middle seat of the middle row. No bulkhead to rest and try to sleep against, or window to look at the ground, and no aisle where I could stretch my legs. And an eight-hour drive from Orlando back to Atlanta, on top of all that. My first trip to Europe was worth it, but man, it was rough.
U.S. to Germany.
SFO nonstop to Auckland, on Air Canada. IIRC it was about 12 hours or so.
They showed the three worst movies I have ever seen, back-to-back-to-back: Garfield, The Big Bounce, and Catwoman.
It transcended badness. It’s become a funny story we remind each other about to this day. We were tried and having free drinks and laughing at the awfulness. “Is that…Bill Murray?!” “Jennifer Love Hewitt looks faker than the cat.” “Drink when he says ‘Lasagna’.” Then they’d announce the next one. “Garfield is a better actor than this chick.” “They’re actually making Hawaii suck.”
By the time they announced the third one, “Our next feature is available on channel 3…Halle Berry stars…as…Catwoman!” my friend and I were laughing so hard at the absurdity of them picking one even worse than the others that our wives had to tell us to keep it down.
Jeez, what kind of plane were you flying on? WikiAnswers says 9 hours.
My longest is only 11 hours; Tokyo to LAX. Amsterdam to Johannesburg took about 11 hours also.
As above. Only it was nigh on 17 hours from LAX to Sydney with a strong headwind. Twenty minutes before landing we were diverted to Melbourne because of fog. The people who hadn’t died of DVTs first killed the bitch attendants and then killed themsleves.
Osaka Japan. Going over the time varied, but the longest was over 16 hours.
Now, this was not *just *the flight mind you, but coming back I started my stop watch when I left the hotel and stopped it when I stepped into my house and it was just slightly more than 24 hours.
My memory must have inflated how long the journey was. :smack:
I have flown:
LA - Sydney (which is further than San Francisco - Sydney… flown that one too)
Sydney - Dubai (I actually started in Wellington, NZ that day)
Atlanta - Dubai
LA - Hong Kong
All 15+ hours.
I think the longest one offered from Anchorage to the states is to Denver (could be wrong) and it’s around 5 hours. I think I’d rather be planebound for an entire flight than all of the on/off, on/off I have to deal with when going further than the west coast. I did three “hitches” during the Katrina cleanup and they were around 17 hours long from Anchorage to NOLA.
If I recall, we had no fewer than three plane changes. Not fun.
Longest single leg? JFK to Shannon. I don’t remember how long it was exactly, but it was a full overnight and then some.
For the total trip, I had just gotten off Cleveland-JFK immediately before, and Bozeman-Cleveland a day or two prior.
New York to Johannesburg - about 16 hours non-stop on Northwest Airlines back in 2002. At the time, I believe that was the longest non-stop flight operating. Johannesburg to New York, including ground refueling, about 19 hours. At nineteen years old and exhausted from a week of building a house, 19 hours was a bit long.
Thai Airways International was offering nonstop between Bangkok and New York City, which is a pretty good distance. I believe that’s cancelled now.
Wow. I flew 9 1/2 hours from Denver to London last summer and have vowed to either take a night or two in New York or take some trans-Atlantic cruise from now on. It was brutal. I can’t imagine doing 15-20 hours.
North from Nha Trang and enemy radar painted us and we did evasive maneuvers.
If it is under 12, I consider it a “longish” flight at most. It’s frustrating to be 7 hours into a flight and realize I’m not even half way.
Even harder with a 10 month old baby.
Phoenix to Buffalo which is only about four hours and that I’ll never complain about again.
So yeah, very small there compared to everyone else in here…
…however let me know when you do the “Longest Time on a Greyhound Bus” thread, I’ll be kicking ass and taking names with my times and distances in that one.
I’m taking this flight tomorrow (well, Denver to Anchorage really). It is a stupid roundabout way to get to Anchorage from here: two hours to Denver and five hours to Anchorage. Coming back through Seattle is something like two and three hours.