I Just Took the World's First 20-Hour Flight | Hacker News Reader

I Just Took the World's First 20-Hour Flight

bloomberg.com

39 pointsvaliant-comma64 comments

Title should be annotated "[in business class]." He had a fully reclining bed. I am not sure that it is even legal to refer to the length of your flight unless you flew in regular seating.

> I am not sure that it is even legal to refer to the length of your flight unless you flew in regular seating.

How would that work? What the hell?

I think it’s a joke.

I think he/she was being facetious.

This. They used the empty economy area for physical workout. Good luck with that once this thing is packed and people will start walking around. This flight looks like a horror story and this "experiment" is an ad.

It's more like you divide the time in business class by two to get the equivalent time in coach.

I’ve done ~17:55 minutes in economy. I had aisle, so it wasn’t the worst... but after my third nap and third movie, and doing some work... I got really bored and just wanted it to end

This article sounds like it’s an ad; ie journalists onboard to cover the new route with an experimental twist. If they really want to test the effects on a human body then do it in cattle class (economy) not biz class with creature comforts.

Agreed. Singapore Airlines already flies nearly this distance commercially (JFK-SIN). I'm not really sure what difference 30 minutes is going to make to require all these experiments. Qantas themselves fly Perth London direct which is only 90 minutes shorter.

But good PR from Qantas I must say, it's got massive writeups everywhere.

I believe it is EWR-SIN

This article puts a heavy emphasis on overcoming the jet lag from NY to Sydney, but you get the exact same time difference flying from anywhere in Europe to the west coast of the U.S. and people do that regularly. In fact, I just did it last week. It's no big deal, at least not in terms of time zone adjustment. Personally, I find it much harder to go the other way, from CA to Europe. My body parses that as a 15 hour difference and it typically takes me a full week before I'm not waking up in the middle of the night any more.

Also, being on the plane for 20 hours is not so different from the 18 hours it takes to fly from SF to Singapore, which also happens every day. This all seems much ado about nothing.

NY->Melbourne would be fantastic. Right now the flight there is a 24+ hour trip with at least one layover in HK or LA/SF.

What I noticed is after about 3 or 4 hours (for me), I decompress and start feeling like a child on a road trip again. Time is kinda of just going by, you distract yourself. They serve food at good intervals and you eventually get of the plane.

To say the California->Australia part is actually not as annoying as the domestic short haul flights from NY->LA which is like being jam packed like a sardine with few amenities. International, even in the cheap section, was comfy enough and I even had leg room!

For anyone doing US <-> Australia flights, and assuming you have a few extra days up your sleeve, look in to doing a stop over in Honolulu.

On four separate occasions i've stopped in HNL for 2 or 3 nights for little (less than $150) to no additional cost to the airfare (you have to sort out your own hotel and food, obviously), and what there's no better place to spend a few days killing time and smoothing out the jet lag.

> assuming you have a few extra days up your sleeve

Ha! If I had a few extra days up my sleeve, I wouldn't be flying to Australia in the first place!

Australia to Europe is roughly 21 hours total flight time. Even using Business Class, the long-leg Melbourne-Dubai is about 14 hours and not pleasant.

We took to breaking the whole trip into three 7-hour parts, Melbourne-Singapore with 2-3 nights stopover, then Singapore-Dubai with another 2-3 nights stopover, and then the final 7-hour leg Dubai-Paris.

This gave sufficient recovery-time between flights for us poor old 70-year-olds and had the benefit of breaking the 9-hour time-zone difference into three smaller jumps that reduced jet-lag quite markedly.

Seconded!

Breaking the Dubai leg with a Singapore stopover is awesome. Singaporean food markets are an experience not to be missed. Now I am addicted to rose cordial!

I've traveled 24-36 hours one-way, probably two dozen times. Staying awake for long periods to "adjust" is the opposite of what helps me: constant naps. Sleep for 30 minutes, sleep for 3 hours, whatever - as much as I can get, every leg. When I arrive, I stay awake until the local time is approximately "late", and then sleep (avoiding alcohol and caffeine, using earplugs and eye mask, to maximize sleep potential). So far I have only been jetlagged once.

Do you wake up early or late, local time?

Normal time? I pick the cheapest flights, so it's kind of random. If the flight is in the A.M. but it's 15 hours & no connections, I find that much harder to adjust to than a 25+ hour trip.

If I ever took this flight I’d probably be stuck next to a screaming child, with a seat kicker behind me and a full flight duration seat recliner in front of me :D

I've flown 15+ hour flights, and yes, I recline my seat. So does most everybody else. To expect someone to sit straight up for that duration, makes you the inconsiderate party.

I don’t think I’ve ever agreed more with an HN comment.

The complaint isn’t necessarily that the person is reclining. It’s more that the legroom is so small that the recliner can actually bother you.

So it’s okay to mash other people’s knees?

Not my problem. Buy a premium ticket.

On a domestic flight within the US, I'll try to accommodate you. Once the flight length exceeds 6, 7 hours, yeah, that seat is going back.

Yes. If you want more legroom pay for the emergency aisle or a premium seat.

If you want to recline buy business class seat, wtf. Reclining should be allowed only when person behind you is fine with that. Some airlines even have stickers which say exactly this.

If you want the person in front of you not to recline then buy business class.

Seats in coach recline and it's not my problem that you're being stingy.

Yep, everyone know it’s only douchey on a <3 hour flight

I prefer the style of seat that instead of reclining pulls the seat base and a panel of fabric forwards. That way you get to lean back as much as you like, but the further you go, the more of your own room you sacrifice rather than the person behind you. Feels fairer.

What if you have the middle seat in the last row next to the toilets that doesn't recline?

Lighten up, Francis. Or at least make a similarly defensive and contorted argument on behalf of all the child travelers and seat kickers.

The only person in that situation being rude is the seat kicker. Children don't travel well, but you can't get mad at the parent. Especially for international travel, it's usually the only option. I'm pretty sure I can't get a boat from the US to Europe anymore, and even if I could, a multi-week journey isn't really feasible.

So yeah, when the kid is screaming I feel bad and I try to take him to the galley, but there is only so much standing in the galley you can do.

And I'm definitely reclining my seat on an 11 hour flight.

You can - and it's about 6~7 days. Still not feasible, but certainly not multi-week.

7 days each way. ie. multi-week round trip.

That would be true. But like the commenter recommending an HNL two/three day break between LAX and somewhere in AUS, if I don't have to there tomorrow, I am otherwise required to be here. (For arbitrary values of here and there).

20 hour commercial flight. Fly a B2 bomber, from Missouri to the Middle East, and back, non-stop. I think it’s 44 hours, cramped in that little cockpit.

https://www.uso.org/stories/253-inside-the-longest-bombing-r...

> airline used this test trip to explore ways to reduce its inevitable downside: Soul-crushing, body-buckling jet lag.

Our soul can't travel as fast as a plane, that's why we feel weird while waiting for it to catch up with us.

edit: eh, finally saw the day a reference to Gibson is down voted on HN ^^

This sounds quite unpleasant and hard to keep up in economy class. Sydney time is NYC time minus 9h. Why don't they just start at 10am or so and have passengers stay up and go to bed soon after arrival (9pm local time)?

You have to push the body to stay awake at some point. If you do what you said, they'd have to arrive at the airport around 7am, which means they probably woke up at 5am in NYC if they're lucky. So you'd be asking them to stay awake about 6 hours longer than they normally would which is... exactly the same as leaving late and asking them to stay up.

> they probably woke up at 5am in NYC if they're lucky

Whoops! In Berlin I'd get up at 7:30 to catch a flight at 10. Let's say noon then.

> exactly the same as leaving late and asking them to stay up

Except that they wouldn't have to sleep in conditions that are adverse to sleeping.

> In Berlin I'd get up at 7:30 to catch a flight at 10

That's cool, but in the US, you generally have to arrive three hours ahead of your international flight. You can push it to two, but if you arrive less than 90 minutes ahead, you can't check luggage.

And in NYC you still need to get to the airport.

And then once you arrive in Sydney, it's not like you get to just hit the pillow. You have to go through customs and immigration, and then get to your hotel. It'll be at least four more hours before you even see a bed.

So your proposal demands that the person stay awake for 19 hours of flight, plus five hours before that, plus four after, for a total of 28 hours. And be the most functional at the last four hours as they navigate customs and immigration and finding a hotel in a foreign city.

Sleeping on a plane sucks but I'd rather do that than attempt to navigate a foreign city with no sleep.

Here are some pictures of the seats in economy class:

https://www.businessinsider.com/qantas-longest-flight-new-yo...

It must be awful.

> Sydney time is NYC time minus 9h

It's 10 hours in July, 8 in December. Right now, Sydney sprung ahead, but NYC hasn't fallen back.

This does make me wonder how airlines deal with time changes like this, or are long-haul flights planned with enough extra time in the schedule that a few hours won't make a difference?

I'm surprised they used only a twin-engined aircraft for such a long flight.

A twin engine jet will be lighter.

You might find this interesting - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ETOPS - That's part of what's changed the hub-and-spoke model of the past since twin-engine planes can now go much further from an emergency landing.

By playing around with the ETOPS options on Great Circle Mapper you can see the 787 can fly over any part of the Pacific. Aircraft with lower ETOPS ratings would have had to fly non-direct routes to ensure they didn't stray too far from a usable airport.

http://www.gcmap.com/mapui?P=jfk-syd&MS=wls&DU=mi&E=330

Try dropping the ETOPS to 60 minutes and you'll be able to clearly see where the airports are.

All long haul commercial aircraft are twin engine now. The 747 is a relic and used almost exclusively for cargo now, and the A380 has ceased production. The game changer was new ultra high bypass engines like the GE90 that made the fuel savings of a twin engine configuration attainable by having sufficient thrust to replace four. Also with increased reliability, ETOPs regulations have allowed for twin engine jets to operate across practically any stretch of water. And with the decentralization of routes, the need for huge 400 passenger planes has gone as well. The future will be entirely twin jet.

The future will hopefully be electric. The amount of engines might rise again.

A tesla's battery pack is about 1000 pounds. The gasoline that would get a car to travel the same distance weighs about 100 pounds. For long haul, the fuel/battery weight would dominate engine weight, so unfortunately, I don't think planes will be using batteries for a while.

If commercial aircraft go electric (which as the other commenter pointed out, won’t be happening for a while), the number of engines would be 0. Electric motors are not the same as gas turbine engines.

I think you mean there would be no internal combustion engine. According to Oxford, an engine is "a machine with moving parts that converts power into motion". So an electric motor is still an engine.

Ah, I guess you're right. In the aerospace world, engines typically mean one type of device. I stand corrected :)

Nothing so far electric has come anywhere close to the energy density of kerosene, and given how important it is for planes to be as lightweight as humanly possible, expect kerosene to remain in use for many decades to come. Unless, of course, a revolution occurs in battery technology that makes them more energy dense than kerosene.

Electric will absolutely have a role in commercial air travel. It's going to revolutionize inter-city travel that is currently too far to drive comfortably, yet not quite far enough to warrant dealing with a flight by allowing people to hop on a tiny aircraft with minimal security flying out of small airfields. Think routes like SF-LA. But it's never going to replace jet fuel for long haul flights barring unimaginable breakthroughs in battery tech.

Actually Qantas still uses QF74 (a 747B) doing non stop routes between SFO & SYD. LA to Sydney is done by A380. Other carriers use 2 engined dreamliners.

I just flew on a Lufthansa 747 from ORD to FRA two weeks ago.

What’s the connection between flight duration and number of engines?

Reliability (ETOPS regulations), as well as the fact long hauls are usually fewer larger flights meaning they use larger aircraft.

Twin-engine aircraft have only one working engine if one fails, and there are rules regarding how far they can be from the nearest suitable airport in that case.

In practice that means that each type of twin-engine aircraft has a limit: Can only be that far from shore. For aircraft with more reliable engines the limit is higher, so they don't have to pick island-hopping routes when crossing oceans.

For reference: http://www.gcmap.com/mapui?P=syd-jfk

You'd think their meal order tracking system would be more advanced than a sheet of paper hung with masking tape.

Oh, like this is a big deal. There are many inter-city bus trips that long.

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