The longest would be Chicago to Frankfurt at 9+ hours. 2nd longest would be Chicago to Hawaii at just under 9 hours.
Shanghai to Chicago. I don’t recall the exact duration of the flight, but I know I boarded at 1845 Monday and got off at 1815 Monday. The flight out didn’t feel so long, but some of that was being able to set up a sleep schedule before hand.
Newark to Detroit, which seemed to be slightly longer than the Detroit to Newark flight a few days before, which was about an hour.
Any chance this was actually a Gulfstream V (which is indeed nice)? Googling doesn’t turn up any bizjet designated ‘Galaxy V’.
Longest is probably San Francisco to Atyrau which is ~16hr.
Probably Newark to Taipei.
A few months ago, I was flying Houston to Tokyo. The passenger next to me had never flown internationally before, apparently, and was stunned when I told him that we still had a long ways to go after 4 hours (he had commented that we must be about to land soon, after 4 hours.) The idea of it being a 13-hour flight apparently never occurred to him.
But the OP asked for the longest time on a single plane. As with the Phoenix-Surabaya flight mentioned earlier in the thread, there is no way that you flew directly from San Francisco to Atyrau. There are no airlines that fly direct to Atyrau from anywhere in the United States.
LAX to Denpasar, Stopovers in either Hawaii, Taipei, or Singapore depending on the airline, tour package, etc. About 21 hours. My wife got a little case of DVT, I think, on the last trip. Once you get there, it’s great. Take Singapore if you can.
I hate to be That Guy, but according to Wikipedia, the longest non-stop flight currently available is Auckland-Dubai, with Sydney-Dallas in number two.
Auckland - Dubai is more than 17 hours(!) and Sydney - Dallas is just under that.
Singapore - San Francisco comes in at number three, at just over 16 hours.
The longest direct flight (by distance) is NZ 1, the Auckland - London (with Special Guest Appearance in Los Angeles) route I mentioned earlier.
The question is not about the length of the flight. Some of the newest passenger jets can comfortably be scheduled for 18-hour flights, which means that, with safety margins, they can stay in the air for even longer.
The issue is whether such a flight exists.
How many people, do you think, need to fly from San Francisco to Atyrau on any given day? Or from Phoenix to Surabaya? Do you think it is enough people to justify an international airline scheduling a direct flight between those city pairs? The answer to the latter question is a big fat no.
I guess it’s possible that those people managed to take direct flights if they went on some sort of charter flight, but not on a regularly-scheduled airline. I guess it’s also possible that Kazakhstan Airlines has, or had, a regular direct flight to San Francisco, and that Garuda has, or had, direct flights from Surabaya to Phoenix, but a search yesterday failed to find any such flight.
International routes are generally scheduled based on demand, and getting to unusual destinations generally involved changing planes, not because the planes can’t fly the distance, but because the airlines set their schedules based on projected income.
I live in San Diego. It is, for all intents and purposes, basically exactly the same distance from Sydney as Los Angeles is. An international jet like a 747 or 777 could comfortably fly from Sydney to San Diego. Yet when i fly between here and Australia, i have to fly first to Los Angeles, because no international airlines run direct flights between San Diego and Sydney.
My longest flight isn’t that impressive – just 8 hours or so IIRC from NYC to London.
But I have been on a submarine crossing the Atlantic, which took weeks.
The various routes between USA (LAX and SFO) and Australia (SYD and MEL). Judging from the number of posters who also have flown those routes, I guess I’m just middle of the road. However, … on one flight from Australia to the USA I was in the back of the 747, in the middle section. I got stuck sitting next to a mother with kids. One was an infant, who cried the entire trip. The entire fucking trip.
When we were about thirty minutes out from landing, a flight attendant came by and handed me a large bag. In in were two bottles of their finest wine, one red and one white, from first class. She told me it was for all of the noise I endured; I was the only one who didn’t complain about the crying mess.
Tokyo to Orlando. Don’t remember the exact time, but I flew it three times. Once in First Class, once in Business and once in the back.
According to our travel itinerary, 14 hours 50 minutes, from LAX to Guangzhou, China. Although there was more travel involved before we got to our final destination. All together, we basically started traveling at 2:30 PM on day 1 and stopped at 11:30 PM on day 2, so, what, a solid 34 hours? Yikes. SO glad that’s over.
You are correct. SFO to Moscow was 12 hours followed by a 3 hour flight to Atyrau.
My apologies. :smack:
I think we’re arguing the same point here. I know how international air travel works; I’ve done enough of it. I am agreeing with your point there aren’t any direct flights to some of the obscure places a couple of people have implied that travelled directly to.
For the benefit of the folks playing along at home, I provided a wiki link to the longest flights currently in regular commercial service.
Lightweight here
Atlanta to Seattle.
Me, too. The overall trip was Atlanta - Auckland, but I got sensible and arranged an overnight stay in Los Angeles. Still, 14 hours in a window seat in coach was pretty trying. Got lucky with my seat neighbor - she was a biologist heading to Antarctica to study population genetics in leopard seals. Very interesting woman.
The return trip was my longest day of flying - Auckland to Los Angeles to Memphis to Atlanta. That was around 24 hours, although we took off from Auckland at 7:00 am and arrived in Los Angeles at 7:25 am the same day, so I guess it was a pretty quick flight. Seemed longer, though.
Frankfurt-am-Main, Germany, to McGuire Air Force Base, Ft. Dix, NJ, on a MAC flight, returning from almost 2 years US Navy duty homeported on the French Riviera.
Next longest was the flight to get to Nice, France, from Logan Airport, Boston, Mass., (PanAm Flt 154) with stops in Lisbon, Portugal, and Barcelona, Spain. That one took from about 10 p.m. to 2 p.m, the next day, local times (with 5 hours of time zone shifts).
MAC flight? In the Army we flew commercially between duty stations. 