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First Class Suite on Qantas’ ultra-high-range A350-1000.
Courtesy: Qantas
Long trips are making a comeback.
It is one of the clearest signs yet that airlines are betting that the recovery in international travel, which has been decimated by the Covid pandemic, will continue to grow.
On Wednesday, Qantas launched service between New York and Sydney with a stop in Auckland, New Zealand, at Boeing 787 Dreamliners, instead of the previous stop in Los Angeles. But the Australian carrier is focusing on longer routes: nonstop flights from Sydney to New York and London. Trips can take about 20 hours, which is enough time to see most of the Star Wars Skywalker Saga.
“You don’t have to take off your bags, you don’t have to transfer, you don’t have a chance of miscommunication,” Qantas CEO Alan Joyce told CNBC Thursday at an exhibition of the airline’s new cabins in New York. . The airline estimates that the new routes could reduce travel time by more than three hours compared to flights that stop at other airports.
For eight years, Qantas has worked with sleep scientists who have studied passengers’ moods, sleep patterns and eating in hopes of reducing the effects of jet lag on very long flights, with tests conducted in 2019. They found that delaying meal service and helping keep passengers awake for a while Longer using cabin lights to combat the effects of jet lag when they reach their destination.
Qantas plans to operate the new aircraft nonstop on its long-haul Airbus A350-1000 aircraft starting in late 2025. It will seat 238 passengers, far fewer than the 350 passengers standard versions of the jets can fit. Qantas has limited the number of people on board to accommodate wider seats and to take into account the weight and range of the aircraft.
The airline has ordered 12 private jets.
“Qantas is the only airline willing to do that. Because from Australia, we are so far from everywhere that we can justify at least 12 (of these) aircraft,” Joyce said.
The aircraft will be equipped with six enclosed first-class suites that include a table for two, a reclining chair, a 32-inch touchscreen TV, and a two-meter (more than 6.5-foot) flat screen. It will also feature 52 Business Class suites with flat beds and 40 Premium Economy seats, as well as 140 Economy Class seats.
They will also have what Qantas calls a “wellness area” that has stretching handles, on-screen exercise guides and refreshments. Qantas said Wi-Fi will be free.
Joyce said the airline’s international capacity has returned to 85% of pre-pandemic levels and that he expects that to fully recover next March.
Passengers aboard QF7879 are taken through exercise classes during the flight from London to Sydney live on November 15, 2019 in Sydney, Australia.
James D Morgan | Getty Images
However, although ultra-long flights are technically possible thanks to more efficient engines and aircraft, they face other challenges.
“There’s a technical viability, and then there’s an economic viability,” said Robert Mann, an aviation industry analyst and former airline executive.
Singapore Airlines, for example, launched a nonstop flight from Newark, New Jersey, to Singapore that took about 18 hours (times vary due to wind and other factors) in 2004, a bet that business travel and that customers between the two destinations would pay to avoid contact at another airport. In 2008, a reconfigured cabin with just 100 business class seats was offered on the A340-500.
But it halted flight in 2013 as the company ditched the fuel-guzzling four-engine plane. It relaunched in 2018 with a mix of business class and premium economy seats, pausing it during the pandemic and relaunching it last year.
In November 2020, the carrier introduced what is currently the world’s longest flight, from New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport to Singapore.
Here’s a look at the world’s longest flights by distance, according to airline data company OAG:
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