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Comment by beaviskhan | Hacker News Reader

> flight times of up to 22 hours

Making flight connections is never fun, but this sounds absolutely brutal.

Living in Australia, and travelling to Europe last Christmas as a family of 4, I really wanted to get the direct London to Perth flight, but connecting flights didn't line up. Being able to do Melbourne or Sydney would be great. Not needing to deal with connections, and cutting 6+ hours off the total travel time sounds amazing, possibly getting us there a day earlier, meaning more time for Greggs vegan sausage rolls.

Also bad for fuel economy (and/or take a hit on cargo/pax/luggage carrying capacity): You have to take off with all that fuel even though you only need X / hr. Increased weight = more flying at a lower altitude (+ air resistance) until the fuel burn makes it safe to fly higher.

On shorter flights, you still have the weight impact from that empty tank and its infra. If they had to make a bump out on the fuselage, you have a permanent aerodynamics hit.

It's like permanently attaching a cargo carrier to your vehicle to carry more fuel. Fewer fuel stops, but more burn per mile. Can make sense in some situations.

The study of breaking up long-haul flights for reduced fuel burn is usually called: "Intermediate Stop Operations"

But it may allow operation of more routes without the need to refuel at both ends. That can be logistically interesting, paticularly going forward in a world of fuel crisis and uncertainty. Being able to deliver people in and out of Cuba without having to refuel in that country would be a market niche.

Assuming you can regularly land with your fuel tanks half-full. You could overbuild everything to support that, but usually airlines don't want to pay for a niche design to support that. I'd bet military aircraft do get that treatment though.

It is actually rather common. Many airlines running shorter flights will not refuel at every stop. It saves time on the ground, which can be more valuable then fuel.

rather common amongst (ultra)-long voyages?

You're still cutting a take off and landing so I can't imagine it'd be too hard to break even for flights where this increased capacity is helpful.

Not only do take-offs spend large amounts of fuel; the fact of a landing and the servicing and refueling in the airport also cost the airlines.

Not having to land but instead having to carry some extra fuel while the engines work in their most efficient mode, and the air drag is low at a high altitude, should make airlines money. Else they won't try that :)

Not just cost, but that limited airport "slot" represents (a slice of the) significant carbon emissions from building/operating the airport.

So even if you only care about carbon emissions, it can still make sense to skip the stop even if it causes slightly more total fuel burn.

Semi-tangential, but this is why free markets are much more efficient than armchair experts.

Armchair experts won't correctly estimate all of these incidental costs nor the value of the saved time and overhead for everyone involved.

It's basically the business model for some airlines like the Icelandic and middle eastern ones. Hub in the middle so you're not paying (potentially extra) staff to rest on an aircraft and/or hotels at each end. Be at home more rather than an out-station. Fuel up more where its cheaper. Do some "scissor" routing. Fly cheaper/less specialized aircraft. Not as easy for Qantas to get all those advantages. Cargo airlines do the same to carry more cargo.

It's okay that different businesses specialise differently. Icelandic Air can do the two short hops and Qantas can focus on the super long nonstop routes, they're both valid. When companies in an industry become carbon copies of each other, they race to the bottom and the industry rapidly enshittifies.

At some crossover point, the reduced fuel carrying (and max capacity requirement) makes up for the additional takeoff+landing. When we're talking ultra-long-haul, constantly fighting against more gravity due to incr fuel weight adds up to a lot of cost/burn.

A compromise option is a technical stop[0] where the plane lands to refuel but passengers don't have to transfer to another aircraft (and often don't even have to deplane). I've never experienced one of these but it sounds way less annoying/stress-inducing than a connecting flight.

[0]: https://travel.stackexchange.com/q/1598

22 hours is a very long time to be in a plane. But, being able to skip a stop in a 3rd nation is likely worthwhile for many. Depending on the routes, it will likely reduce the overall travel time significantly and a meaningful amount of time in the air.

I'd love to visit Australia and SE Asia but am hesitant with those long flights. I'd probably be fine with layflat seats but those are well beyond what I'd ever consider paying for an airline ticket.

Would make sense to offer packages with lay-flat seats in shifts (possibly formally/informally for people on the same ticket).

You could pack a lot more in if you sedate them and put them in racks like they have at the morgue. TBH I'd sign up for that on a long flight if the sedative recovery wasn't bad.

Next stop Phlosten Paradise.

This is exactly what I was thinking of when I wrote it down ;)

Just like The Jaunt by Stephen King. "It's longer than you think, dad! ...about 22 hours."

Ah yes, the B.A. Baracus method! I'd use that!

Especially on the same routes where you’d think about using this kind of airliner...

https://www.airnewzealand.com/economy-skynest

You just know this is going to be 2-3 times the price of an economy seat, which means you're going to buy the economy seat anyway. In flights, price beats everything else.

I think this is an ancillary specifically for economy class passengers—you pay a certain amount to reserve a 4-hour slot on a bunk or something. I have no idea, but my guess is economy + nap slot would still come in well under the cost of a business seat. Plus they can sell those same 6 berths what, 4 or 5 times over in the same 22-hour flight?

If I recall correctly they’re not certified for use during taxi takeoff and landing, I’d imagine due to orderly-evacuation kinds of requirements.

You can play the points game and win - Singapore biz from US west coast booked a year in advance is within the signup bonus amount :)

Many of colleagues do this all the time, usually via the Middle East. I did it before; it sucks but with enough gin tonic and melatonin it goes by in with too much pain.

I've traveled UK to Australia a few times. Not nonstop, but with stops in SE Asia, basically 2x13 hours plus a few hours airport time.

It sucks, but you get over it because how else are you going to get there? If you don't suffer blood clots or something, it isn't really actively dangerous.

>2x13 hours plus a few hours airport time.

That sounds like pure torture

Isn't everything, really? A dentist's appointment for example. It has an end, and then you're glad you had the courage to go through it.

The longest I've spent in a dentist's chair is perhaps an hour, when I had braces as a teen.

Being cooped up in a metal tube for 13 hours, knowing you had to do the same thing tomorrow, and then the same thing two more fucking times on your way home, is not worth any vacation to me.

Then don't do it for vacation. A resort in Australia is no more valuable to you than one in Florida (if you're in the US). Do it for something more meaningful.

> how else are you going to get there?

Sailing would be more fun, IMO. Might take a quarter or half a year though.

Seattle to Joburg is brutal. It's ~23 hours of flying with a lay over somewhere like Dubai. As much as a 23 hour flight sounds terrible, it's hard for me to express how much dread I felt getting back onto a plane right after a 13 hour flight. I'd rather just hunker down for the full day I think.

What are the economics of connecting flights? I'd imagine that max flight time isn't the only factor; hubs allow people to move around via connecting flights in a way that might not be economically acceptable if all flights were direct.

These ultralong flights will surely only be used regularly on routes with enough traffic, like London/Sydney.

Although they could also run intermittently to different places. Like London/Sydney on Monday, London/Melbourne on Tuesday... Which one brings in more money? I really have no idea. If you do it like this you can serve more people with direct flights, but they can't pick any day they want. I was once on a scenic long-distance train for some reason that didn't run every day due to low usage — Wellington to Auckland, I think? Normally you'd fly.

New A350's has better air quality, higher humidity and cabin pressure, and these long haul flits have less seats to reduce weight .. but it's still brutal.

Does it actually take 22 hours for a commercial airplane to get to the diametrically opposite point on the globe?

900 km/h, 20,000 kilometers. Yep!

Yeah but the idea is most folks will fly direct.

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