On one hand we need to cramp as many people as possible to make it cost effective, on the hand passengers are basically torturing themselves. Especially if you are 6 foot plus tall.
The way to be comfortable on a long flight is to pay for it.
You can find premium economy seats to Japan for $1,500 and business class for $2,500. It wasn’t that long ago when those sort of prices were the economy ticket.
I see a good amount of $400 economy fares that’ll stick you on a plane for upwards of 10 hours. It’s an incredible value. A lot of people making that trip can just upgrade to either an extra legroom seat or premium economy and they’ll still be spending less than they did not even 10 years ago.
https://www.executivetraveller.com/here-s-where-qantas-pilot...
Critical parts of the flight (such as take off and landing) will have the two most senior pilots in command, but less demanding parts in cruise, one of the second officers will be backing up one of the senior crew while the other 2 crew members have mandated rest.
Because these are 'hot bunks', you only need 2 available for the flight crew at any time. I assume the cabin crew have a similar rotation system.
I just don't see how you could reasonably stop in Russia or China while flying from the US to Sydney.
But yeah, I don't think there exists a NA<->AU route with practical stops in China or Russia https://i.succ.in/6myR8ZFQ.png
This only happens when departure and arrival are both in the Northern Hemisphere, if that's the case, great circle routes appear as curved towards the North when plotted on a 2D map.
But here we are going from Northern to Southern hemisphere, so the great circle route will appear S-shaped, and the middle section will not be very far away from a straight line drawn on a 2D map.
This is the great circle route SFO-SYD, Honolulu is pretty close as you can see http://www.gcmap.com/mapui?P=sfo-syd
The layback seats made me enjoy it far more than even a 5 hour flight.
I regularly travel both business class and premium economy, and especially on an overnight flight I feel fresh after business and sore after premium economy.
I hope that airlines like Qantas etc. realise that on these extra long flights, people like myself are more than willing to pay a little extra for small comforts like plenty of leg room or space to get up and walk/stretch at regular intervals.
Then again, I just came back from Europe in a Scoot 787. Scoot are the 'budget' arm of Singapore Airlines, but I guess with the wealth of Singapore, their budget carrier is the equivalent of most other full service carriers.
I flew once on a business class in a 10+ hour flight. I slept so well. The food was great. It was so relaxing. I bet first class would have been even better. I wouldn't mind flying for 20 hours in a business class.
I haven't downvoted, but I'm having problems with the last sentence
> we need an honest study, and subsequent class lawsuit.
Honest stud exist for many years [0] and it's common knowledge in every tourist guide [1].
Class lawsuit is a very American thing, let's sue everyone regardless of proof or if the condition can be avoided by the persons themselves.
Even the link between flight and DVT is not 100% clear [2], although there seems to be a good mechanism explaining it:
> not all experts agree that air travel is a direct cause of thrombosis due to a lack of large-scale population studies. Such studies are difficult to evaluate, in that the extended period between flight time and presentation of DVT or PE symptoms induces variability.
The conclusion of this [3] research is somewhat disturbing:
> Moreover, given the low incidence of DVT in the general population we may never know if air travel increases the risk of DVT because studies with the required sample size to detect a significantly increased risk are unlikely to be sponsored.
[0] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1989755/ [1] https://www.cdc.gov/ncbddd/dvt/travel.html [2] https://www.stoptheclot.org/learn_more/air_travel_and_thromb... [3] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC434500/
Anyway, considering the stringency of aviation regulations designed to mitigate already very small risks, I think it would be consistent to force passengers to get up and have a walk once in a while (if this would indeed mitigate the risk of DVT). Obviously airlines would never take this step, but they could at least recommend it, or the FAA could enforce it.