Qantas wants to fly from Sydney to New York or London nonstop
bloomberg.com
bloomberg.com
Currently it's a 24 hour flight with only a single stopover, in Bangkok.
But now a resent plane I was on (I forget with who) the inbuilt IFE also didn't have these directional filters which was really annoying as you could see basically every seat beaming into the dark cabin.
So usually once a year (maybe twice) I fly from New York to Perth. By distance this is one of the longest journeys. Perth is a few hundred miles from the antipode of NYC. I have the "advantage" that I can fly in pretty much any direction. The two major options for a single stop are via the Middle East or over the Arctic to Hong Kong. There might be other options through say South Korea or Japan but I don't think any airlines fly direct from Perth to these. Oh and I think China Southern can do it via China.
Anyway. this amounts to roughly 24 hours (total) in aircraft time. I'm 6'2" and wider than a coach seat so this would be torture. I am fortunate enough to be able to afford a premium cabin so it's one of the things I choose to spend money on. This might mean paying 3x as much for a flight. I don't care.
Anyway, a big problem with even longer haul flights is the added cost of carrying the fuel you need for those last few thousand miles. I think Qantas estimated the per passenger cost of LHR to PER is about 30-40% higher than making a stop.
SYD-JFK is ~10% longer than LHR-PER, which will make the cost what? 60-70% more than going via LAX or DFW.
The problem of course too is if your final destination from Sydney isn't London or New York then you need to make a connection anyway.
So this is where say the ME3 carriers shine: ultra long routes with a single stop and a lot of options for city pairings.
Anyway, I'm sure someone will want these flights. I don't expect any direct NYC to PER flights anytime soon however. :)
That still gets there quicker than with a stop.
I'd do it. I'm in Adelaide, and I don't like the stop overs to Europe.
If someone reinvented supersonic flight, and gave it a 20.000 km range, then that would be absolutely fantastibulastic!
That would be about 3x the range of Concord, so I guess it will never happen. Boom claims to be working on a 40 seat plane with a long range, but I doubt there would be any economy in that.
England is the 'motherland', so is still a popular destination for some and for Brits wanting to visit the colonies.
I think the New York route might be harder to fill but I suspect it has more to do with carving out a new market for Qantas, as there is a lot of competition flying to California.
Do people actually talk this way? I live in England and I have never heard anyone refer to going to visit their family/friends/whatever in Australia as "visiting the colonies"
http://www.indymedia.org.au/2010/11/12/australia-is-still-le...
This is one reason why section 44 has suddenly turned into such a landmine. After the Australia Acts, Britain is considered a foreign power.
Its Section 4 - giving only the Queen the right to select the Australian Governor General - that is the real issue, though.
And my local constitutional lawyer (a quite famous one, whom I know through a family connection), tells me "its a legal grey area with no finite position possible - sure, we have sovereignty on paper, but we are still governed by the Queen in practice..."
The Constitution is interpreted under Constitutional law, as stated by the High Court. It can only be applied in the context of that legal meaning, which is not the same as a reading by an interested but untrained citizen.
> we are still governed by the Queen in practice...
I feel as though you may be misquoting your famous family connection.
In a constitutional crisis, do you sincerely think the High Court would say "oops, I guess we're the personal colony of a Queen who suddenly upended hundreds of years of Parliamentary Supremacy somehow"?
If you know a bookie who'll lay odds, I'll happily take this wager.
Do you wanna debate that we're in the Coalition, currently destroying the middle east, willingly, for example?
>we're the personal colony of a Queen who suddenly upended hundreds of years of Parliamentary
We're locally sovereign, but not internationally sovereign. Even our own courts have admitted this - but of course, its not for the Australian people to know this, or even have any power to do anything about it. After all, we're all just struggling to be able to afford cool shit.
'K' and 'S' are about 50 years apart on my keyboard.
> We're locally sovereign, but not internationally sovereign.
The majority in Sue v Hill conclusively ruled that Britain is a foreign power. It has not been overturned and it never will. There is no Imperial Crown.
There are Crowns, which are legally distinct. The Prime Minister of the UK cannot advise the Crown in right of the Commonwealth of Australia; an Australian Prime Minister cannot advise the Crown in right of the United Kingdom; the Premier of New South Wales cannot advise the Crown in right of Victoria and so on.
Again: I will happily lay money on this question.
http://www.cirnow.com.au/fileuploads/AustraliaConcealedColon...
But the Queen is still the head of Australia, so how does that work?
The same as how Elon Musk is CEO of Tesla and SpaceX at the same time but they're different companies.
Is there an independent board who can keep a check on the queen?
You might call the independent board "Parliament".
How do you know they will get deposed, you are talking about hypothetical situations.
(Corruption of government starts with its secrets, and Australia has .. many .. that would startle its citizens into rebellion, which is what the political system of Australia is truly designed to police, not serve..)
I can't design analogies to answer questions that you haven't asked, mate, and you can't stretch an analogy from one question to answer any other.
They are not independent when you look at from the queen's perspective, she still rules both of them. That is the point.
Then you should be used to British humor.. err humour ;) - and don't forget, don't mention the war![1]
Had there been no security check it had been nice to take a walk and look at the too expensive wine in the taxfree shops, but the extra inconvenience of queuing for 30 minutes and unsolicitedly getting fingers down the front of your pants is surprisingly irritating when all you really want to do is to take a nap.
In one or two cases I had the option to stay in the plane, while they were cleaning, which was not bad.
They really should have small gyms with bookable time (just a exercise bicycle maybe)
I've done the Sydney/Europe route quite a few times. The break in Asia does help; just to have a one hour walk around. As does first class! (did it once)
I've been on many transpacific flights where enough people do it at the same time and all the aisles are blocked.
Going higher (for less drag) is a problem because it's hard to keep the engines running in the thin air, and on top of that, high speed also makes it hard to keep them running.
Until we figure out a new engine design, 80% of the speed of sound is about the max.
Military engines get around this by consuming incredible amounts of fuel - not practical for commercial flights.
You just need a way to get you to 60000ft efficiently!
That's why we're still at 0.8-ish mach numbers -- you can build those planes big and comfortable for the people who buy the expensive tickets.
Really long-haul routes might be getting into the range where people would be willing to sacrifice some seating space/amenities for a much faster plane. But then you're into needing much greater range than the Concorde. And, while there are a few of these routes that are economically viable on today's aircraft, even EWR-SIN didn't ultimately work out for Singapore Airlines.
DVT is gone now, but still dealing with the repercussions. I ended up getting Schamberg's disease as a side effect of Xarelto, so both of my legs look like they're covered in a rash. I have some vascular inefficiency issues in my left leg that become prominent if I sit for more than 30 minutes.
Good times /s
Not to say its worthless of course, but its not as useful as it might seem.
Most people don't realize, but the range of a fighter jet is very small. The F-15 gets about 1500 miles of range (or 750 miles of radius). A 747 gets nearly 8,000 miles of range, so FIVE TIMES more range.
Also do you ever wonder how we get jets to Afghanistan? We literally fly them the entire way. After September 11th the Air Force had to set up something known as a "Sky Bridge". It's a network of Boeing Aerial Refueling planes that F-15s would visit, one after the other, to airbases in Europe, Turkey, Kuwait, etc. So F-15s were refueling 4 or so times on a single flight.
Other fun facts: - Helicopters can do aerial refueling as well - If you lower the amount of fuel in a jet, it can take off with shorter runway. This can be important in hastily set-up or even damaged airports, and the jets can then refuel aerially later
Is this true? I find it so hard to sit in the plane for such a long time. I don't think flying in business class would make too much of a difference because it is still way more constrained than outside a flight.
Of course, I don't know if the stop overs for refuelling involve a connecting flight or if you are put back on the same plane, so in those cases (where your are guaranteed a rest stop of no more than 3 hours) I can see the preference going ether way.
The reason for this partially is old airline freedom laws. Because stopovers used to basically be required for all long haul flights in 70s etc you can "stopover" in other countries airports.
In the US, larger airlines often use a flight number twice a day -- once for a domestic flight and once for an international flight. For flights departing to international destinations, it's not uncommon for one of the inbound feeder flights to use the same flight number.
Also, for a foreign carrier, the rules are a bit more complex; they can make an additional stop in the US, and can pick up more passengers, but can't do much more than that. US federal law requires that transportation between two points in the US take place on a US-owned carrier. So, for example, Qantas flies from New York to destinations in Australia with a stop in Los Angeles, and can pick up more passengers at LAX and even change planes there for the onward journey, but they can't sell JFK-LAX tickets.
The 14.5 hour flights I have taken were certainly more tedious than individual 7 or 8 hour flights. But back-to-back 7 or 8 hour flights plus an hour or two layover is much more tedious. Whenever possible, I would rather do a single flight.
If you have a single flight, you get that feeling of being done once you board your first flight, there's just fewer opportunities for stress.
Then again, the times I've had to worry about missed connections are small and the rest didn't end the world; the worst I've had to experience is waiting longer than expected.
Partly what henrikschroder said, but it's also the trip just takes longer with a connection. And after being on a 7 hour flight, I never look forward to getting back on another one. Also I typically have to go through customs and immigration in the stop between the two long-haul fights, so that adds a whole additional level of hassle that would be avoided with a direct flight.
Having flown Sydney to New York and back just last week, I would much prefer a single non-stop flight. Especially since on the way back I missed my connection in SFO due to bad weather and was stuck for a full day: all US West-Australia flights leave late at night, so if you miss one wave, it's 24 hours until the next batch.
Also, 20 hours seems like a lot, but it's only an incremental increase on the current longest flight (17:40 for Doha to Auckland, NZ on Qatar) or the previous longest flight (18h+ for Singapore to NY). The problem is really the economics and the rocket problem: to fly further nonstop, you need to carry lots of fuel, which increases the weight, which requires more fuel... The 18 hour flight was business class only with seats going for north of $10k return and Singapore Airlines still couldn't make it pay off.
I can confirm that. A shower before a long flight, even in economy, can make a huge difference.
I almost never fly business, but I have a Priority Pass membership which gets me into airline lounges to shower. Best thing ever.
Also, showers usually do more than just getting one clean. It could be psychological, but I find showers help me to relax, de-stress, and prepare me for sleep. Of course I'm one of those folks who shower before bedtime, so your mileage may vary.
Am really looking forward to the shower in Singapore after a 12.5hr flight!
It's a remarkably dumb feature, pure novelty.
That depends very much on the kind of aircraft, and while there are aircraft for which this is true this definitely isn't always the case. Modern aircraft are miracles of efficiency.
Most fuel is used to haul the airframe, cargo and the passengers around, fuel is only a relatively small percentage of the total maximum take off weight.
For example, the A350 mentioned in the article has a maximum of 108 Tonnes (140K liters) of fuel on board and has a maximum take-off weight of 280 Tonnes. So no matter what the mix cargo/passengers/fuel is there will never be more than 30-40% of the take-off weight in the fuel, and a good chunk of that (5 - 7 Tonnes) will be burned just on take-off and another 5-7 Tonnes to get it to altitude. So fully 10-14% of the fuel will be gone after the first few minutes of flight, then once you reach cruising altitude the consumption drops quite a bit due to the reduced drag.
Consumption during take off and getting to altitude varies between about 2.5 and 1.0 times consumption at cruise altitude due to increased drag and the climb itself.
With that kind of penalty on a take-off and the required reserve on landing (which is usually dead weight, but which you will very much appreciate if you have to get to your first or second alternate) the overhead of a landing+take-off sequence is pretty stiff so non-stop flights have a good chance of being more efficient if the destination is in range.
There is a cool graph of the fuel efficiency of a 777.
The peak efficiency is 3000 miles. Anything higher than that and you're better off stopping for fuel.
Maximum efficiency merely indicates at which distance all parameters are matched most perfectly, it is not the distance above which one should land to take on more fuel to be more efficient.
Reduction to absurds is an easy way to prove that to yourself, imagine a flight of 3000 miles at maximum efficiency, and then one at 3001 miles at which you claim they should stop to take on more fuel. This clearly is not the case so there is something wrong with your statement.
While boarding a flight this week, I was told to wait (just entered the plane) because they wanted to serve orange juice to someone in business class. So me and some 10 people behind me waited until the air hostess served the juice and came back few mins later, because orange juice couldn't wait for another 15 mins. It felt very weird. I guess rich people do really experience life on a different level.
If you can get the miles from churning, I wouldn't say that the co-pay is particularly onerous, it's much less than it would have cost to buy all the tickets in economy.
Also, on international flights this won't interfere with the boarding process, because usually they either board using multiple doors (one for business/first, one for economy) or they board from a door behind the front cabin, so that people in first/business turn left to get to their seats while people in economy turn right. There are some studies suggesting that if people don't have to walk through and see the fancy cabin on their way into the plane, they get less angry in the economy cabin.
That said, yes, it's a very different world. I've done international flights in economy, and suffered. I've also done them in business class, and was fine. Getting a good night's sleep over the ocean, stepping off the plane into fast track through immigration, then into a lounge for a shower and a hot breakfast, makes the process not only bearable but pleasant.
And that's without getting into the ultra high end of airline travel (which is still well behind what you get once you're into private-jet money). Look up some videos of, say, Lufthansa's first-class terminal in Frankfurt. It's literally a separate terminal for the first-class passengers, with private security screening, private passport control, private dining and relaxation areas, and then they put you in a chauffeured luxury sedan and drive you across the airport to your gate, where you take an elevator up and board the plane, never having to mix with the economy-class passengers at all.
The middle eastern carriers are like this, too, and many go so far as to send a personal driver to your home or hotel to pick you up and make sure you reach the airport in time, and have staff who whisk you through check-in and security and into a private lounge to wait for your flight.
Currently Etihad has the fanciest in-the-air setup, with two different first-class "seats" on their A380s, both more or less private airborne apartments (one of them is literally called "The Apartment", the other is a multi-room setup called "The Residence"), with your own private butler, access to a shower in flight, etc.
SFO has two sets of parallel runways, and usually likes to use 28L/28R for arrivals. There are plenty of protocols for airports to do simultaneous landings on two runways parallel and next to each other, but (simplifying a bit) SFO has the slight problem of them being too close together to do instrument landings for both runways at the same time.
This leads to compromise protocols which rely on the ability of one plane to maintain visual contact with the other plane when doing simultaneous landings. But of course in foggy/cloudy/rainy weather, visibility goes away and SFO can no longer handle simultaneous landings on those runways, which basically cuts the capacity of the airport in half.
If flying premium economy, it's a wash between direct or having a short layover.
In economy, I definitely prefer having a layover closer to the middle. Flying 20h non stop in economy seats is hell and I'd never do it.
[0] http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/business/india-business/A...
[1] http://onemileatatime.boardingarea.com/2016/10/18/air-india-...
That, and the fact that there are a lot of Indian elderly who make the Delhi-San Francisco flight regularly to visit children who work in the Bay Area.
But by time in the air QR921 is still the longest flight in the world (17 hours 30 minutes, compared to Air India's 16 hours 55 minutes). Five other flights also are scheduled for 17 hours or longer in the air: EK449 AKL-DXB; UA1 and SQ31 SFO-SIN; QF8 DFW-SYD; and AA125 DFW-HKG.
America is unique in requiring all passengers to go through immigration, but in that case they are usually going somewhere else in America anyways so it would be a port of entry. Sucks if you are transferring in Miami to go to South America, however.
Melbourne -> Seoul -> Mexico City -> Montreal
The previous time it was Melbourne -> LA -> Newark -> Montreal, flying home Vancouver -> LA -> Brisbane -> Melbourne.
Business class any day but 19hours non stop in Economy is pain for me. (Which the new PER-LHR is).
It makes sense for Qantas though it's mostly the only way to fly more long haul flights competitively because all the flights are too long like this. And saves you airport fees for the stopover.
On a long flight I take a few walks, loiter in the galley area, get the blood flowing in the legs with a session of raising myself up/down on tiptoes repeatedly... Really seems to help.
Boom, according to Crunchbase has raised $35.24M in 3 Rounds from 13 Investors. That's ... nothing. A rounding error in the budget to develop something like this. The CIA reportedly spent 3.7 billion to develop the SR-71 engine. And that was really long ago. What do you want to do with 35 million? 35 billion would be a much, much realistic number.
This is not an industry to disrupt. If you intend to fly in the UK, EU, USA, Australia then you need to certify with the FAA/EASA/CASA etc and you can't pull a fast one with those.
With Uber, it is understandable venture capitalists funded a fantastic trick shamelessly called "sharing economy", rolling back most advances labor achieved in a century. But with flying safety is too important for a similarly illegal company to get anywhere.
Or in other words, breaking the law gets somewhere with the taxi industry because they are relatively small and weak but good luck trying to break the federal regulations set by the FAA. Many tried to be creative already but they didn't get anywhere and that was just getting creative with existing planes. I will get the popcorn as you people try to disrupt the freakin' FAA -- and even if Thiel and the like can get Trump / GOP led Congress to intervene, there's the EASA as well.
For that's the really expensive part. You can build an app and release it (probably full of bugs) for real cheap and disrupt an industry (spits) but building a plane to such exacting standard as these authorities demand is a different world that techbros will find impenetrable, and, again, thanks God for that. And don't tell me they are not, here's the photo: https://boomsupersonic.com/assets/team-page-hero-photo-cdf15... there's a grand total of two women and one black man on the pic among, I didn't bother to count how many white techbros.
However, the linked article discusses taking 20 hours to go from London to Sydney as this huge improvement over the status quo by shaving off 4 hours.
I mean, yeah, 20 hours and no layover is better than 24 hours with a stop, but the "disruption" there is to make a jet that goes twice as fast, and take 10 hours to get there instead of 20. That also (issue of sonic boom over land aside) makes it a 3 hour flight from LA to NYC, or 3.5 hours from NYC to London, or 45 mins SFO to LAX, if that's even enough time to get up to speed.
SpaceX has managed to "disrupt" rockets, lowering launch costs by $300 million/launch, with an architecture the incumbents had rejected with reusable 1st-stage on the launch vehicle, and for cheaper than the space shuttle cost (with the benefit of some advancements in technology since 1972). Their Series A round was $20M.
Reporting that the CIA spent an estimated $3.7 billion to develop the engines for what's still the fastest airplane ever at the height of the cold war era, is an interesting fact to mention because the SR-71 is a fascinating airplane, but hardly relevant to Boom's possible cost, since they're not bankrolled by a government who is fighting the cold war against the USSR. Tantalizingly though, the SR-71's reputed top speed was Mach 3.5. At that speed, Sydney to London would take less than 6 hours!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Double_Sunrise
http://www.qantas.com/travel/airlines/history-catalinas/glob...
I'd gladly pay extra for a direct flight, because...
- 4 hours quicker
- An aircraft issue at Dubai can add a day to your journey (as happened to a friend who visited at Christmas)
- Changing at Dubai always seems to involve twenty minutes of walking, ten minutes on a train to go between terminals and then ages on a bus to get from the gate to the actual aircraft. Total PITA.
I would have thought it has always been here.
If I have the time and the opportunity presents itself to visit a city I want to spend time in, I'm more than happy to. But turning a 20-hour flight into a two+ day journey with additional airport transfers, etc. isn't an improvement in my book. I can usually sleep a bit even in coach. And I just read and watch movies the rest of the time. I don't like it but I don't see the advantage of stretching it out.
[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_Martin_F-22_Raptor#Ma...
Imagine if schools had to be self sufficient. We’d probably have better schools.
This makes it sound like this long a flight is a physical impossibility today. However three minutes of searching leads me to believe a few commercial aircraft have indeed made a similar or longer trip. Not to mention any military aircraft that might do this as well, I'm sure there exists an amount of money that would get you on such an aircraft today :)