I imagine this is aimed at pilots, what is the furthest distance from an airport that commercial airlines might travel? That is, in an emergency what is the longest time a plane would have to fly before reaching an airport?
Great username/question combo 
I could be wrong but I would imagine it would be somewhere on this route that a plane might be at its most remote from an airport. It’s a non-stop flight from Singapore to Newark, New Jersey.
Yeah, you watched House tonight too, didn’t you?
The maximum time that a plane would have to fly before landing is governed by ETOPS regulations. In particular, Boeing once flew a 777 from Sydney to Rio de Jainero, the great circle route for which requires the plane to be up to 330 minutes from any commercial airport. However, I believe that the FAA only certifies planes for commercial operations up to 180 minutes of ETOPS (see the first link.)
No, I don’t watch it. Find it too incongruous Hugh Laurie playing an American.
I don’t know the answer to your question but ETOPS refers only to twin engine aircraft. Three and four engine aircraft such as B747, A380, A330, DC10 etc are not limited in this way.
The governing factor then becomes the fuel endurance. The critical situations considered would normally be one engine inoperative, and depressurised. With an engine out your speed is lower, but you may also use less fuel and the requirements for reserve fuel is lower. In the multi-engine aircraft I’ve flown, one engine inoperative fuel has not been limiting when compared to normal operations.
That leaves depressurised flight. If there is a pressurisation problem, the aircraft will have to be flown at 10,000 feet. This results in higher than normal fuel flows, and lower true air speeds. This is probably the limiting scenario but only over long distances where the extra fuel burn in the cruise outweighs the lower legal reserve fuel required on landing.
So exactly how far away can a B747 or similar aircraft be from an airfield? I don’t know, it depends both on the specific aircraft and the specific airline’s fuel policy.
SIN-NYC is never all that far from an airport, as the OP asks, and can be almost entirely over land.
Over water, anywhere on earth is within 207 minutes for a twin-engine airliner with only 1 running.
Great Circle Mapper FAQ Good great-circle-route mapping site with all this good stuff in it.
Thanks!
hadn’t noticed that… 
Yup!
thanks. 3 hours can be a long time, but House can handle it.
207 minutes. sounds like we are homing in on the answer.
The FAQ at the link explained some of the details.
I didn’t know Midway is partly subsidized by Boeing! It is (was) apparently needed to avoid Boeing having to design in more backup equipment that would (almost) never be needed.
Just an aside - apparently, Concorde would dump about a third of a load of fuel into the atlantic when flying from Europe to New York. I guess that that was the safety margin required to get her to a suitable airport if NY was unavailable, and too dangerous to land with.
As a rough calc, (4 hours flying uses 2/3s of the fuel) that gives Concorde an extra 2 hours flying time - quite a long way
I learned this when working in the building that housed the Concorde refurbishment program after the Paris crash. Concorde is small.
Si
Imagine my surprise when I found out he wasn’t. I was flipping through channels. There was a movie playing on PBS. I was just about to change the channel, when I thought, hey that guy looks familiar! It was a very young (I’m guessing mid 20’s) Hugh Laurie and he sure was speaking weird(as compared to House - I’m not saying that all you Brits speak weird).
I have no idea what the name of the movie was, I think it was set at a school if that helps.
This is not correct (the concorde thing)
Ah, OK. The episode of House that was broadcast last night had House & another character on a flight from Singapore to Newark when a patient fell ill.
This is not correct. There are parts of the Pacific west of Central America, and down near Antarctica that are more than 207 minutes from an airport Cite
[hijack]
In regards to that House episode, his comment, “Fortunately both pilots are meat eaters” made me wonder if there’s any sort of official/unofficial/casual policy that if both the Capt and FO are going to have the in-flight meal that they never both eat the same choice?
Our company policy is that the pilots should have different meals if possible and eat 30 mins apart from each other.
It would have to be one of the Pacific routes. I believe it takes about 6 or 6 1/2 hours to fly between Honolulu and, say, Los Angeles, and you can’t really fly in an arc like they often do to from North America to Asia so as to keep close to a mainland. That would be about 3 hours out then, but it sounds like there are even farther distances. The Pacific is a huge place.
Five hours and 37 minutes according to United Airlines website LAX-HNL. The entire trip is only 337 minutes, so you are not even close to the 207 minute limit. Traveling from Hawaii to Guam is over 7 hours in the air, and it is another 3 hours or so to Japan. By comparison, Hawaii is just off the US west coast.