The Science Behind the World’s Longest Flights

I don't think anybody really enjoys long haul flights, but personally, I especially dislike them. I'd much rather break my flight up into <8hr segments. I guess with everyone trying to squeeze as much of their vacation time though, it's more efficient to take a single 20 hour flight than two 10 hour legs with a 3 hour layover.

A while back, I flew to Vietnam from New Zealand. My flight there was AKL-HKG-SGN (11h30m, 2h40m). My return flight was HAN-SGN-KUL-OOL-AKL (2h, 2h, 8h, 3h). Total flight time is about the same, but the total trip time including stopovers was 18 hours to Vietnam, and 24 hours on return. I found it so much more pleasant to be able to get off the plane, stretch my legs, and eat some real food every few hours. I really don't enjoy long flights at all and I don't think the couple of hours it saves is worth it. 4 hours is the limit for me being comfortable on a flight, after 8 hours I'm feeling quite uncomfortable but I'll manage, and 12 hours is the absolute limit for me for flying. 20 hours on a plane would be absolute torture.

I really don't see the point in these excessively long flights either, you usually have to layover somewhere anyway, these ultra-long flights are most often to a hub like DOH or DXB, where you then need to connect to your final destination.

Flying from Auckland to London, I'd much rather take AKL-HKG-LHR (12hr, 12hr) than AKL-DOH-LHR (18hr, 8hr). I'd even pay a premium of a couple of hundred bucks for it, although conveniently basically every option with one stopover from Auckland to London is about the same cost (I really don't know how it's profitable to fly from NZ to England for US$450 though, that's insane, I'm fairly sure freighting 100kg to London would cost more).

I love reading stories like this as commercial flying has always intrigued me. Geez, has it come a long way! Still remember a flight I had from Europe to Australia when it was such a novelty to smash alcohol cause it was so readily available and then going to the back of the plane to smoke!