Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2019/10/24/qantas-flies-passengers-around.html
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Effect on passengers? I’m more concerned about effects on the pilots.
(I assume the pilots are switched out during refueling.)
[ETA: wait, is this non-stop? Jeez.]
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I’ve done the 15-hour flight from LAX to Sydney as well as the 14-hour flight from LAX to Auckland NZ – both with a six-hour flight from Boston beforehand – and they were true endurance tests. Qantas does a great job of keeping you fed, entertained, and hydrated during the trip, and does what they can to keep you comfortable, but when you’re in a temperature-controlled gently-vibrating compartment with a constant rumbling hum for 15 hours, you lose all sense of time and sort of zone out into a half-awake state, watching weirdly-edited movies and napping in between the flight attendants offering water and beer every half hour.
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Most long haul flights have multiple crews. There’s a crew rest area where the crew can rest, and they switch out so you’ve always got someone relatively well rested to fly the plane.
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I guess it could be helpful to quantify “not good” in some way, especially if they also study ways to alleviate that.
I remember flying back from China, a 15-16 hour flight plus a connecting flight plus a long wait in the Beijing airport for the plane to arrive or get ready or something. We wound up sharing a cab on the way back; the cabbie told the couple we were sharing it with that since they were coming in from Mexico which is such a long flight that he’d drop them off first. We were too tired to object.
(They were on the way anyway so he should have dropped them off first, but I was still bitterly amused later.)
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Qantas never crashed. Never crashed.
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It has been 24,787 days since our last fatal accident.
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There were 6 pilots on board. Here’s a more detailed story re crew numbers, with pics and other statistics ref this flight.
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19 hours? QANTAS has experience with longer lasting flights.
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Locked in a tin can for 19 hours = No Fun.
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It isn’t QANTAS, but still very interesting…
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this strikes me as very odd because in 2014 my wife and i took a non-stop flight from sydney to dallas and we watched the time go by and we recorded in our travel journal that the flight was 21 hours long. we also crossed the international dateline right about midnight of the day we left and ended up experiencing the same date for close to 40 hours before we went to sleep in our own beds. but i clearly remember being in the air for 21 hours and when i looked back in our australia travel journal we had indeed recorded that time in the air between take-off and landing.
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Deep vein thrombosis leading to pulmonary embolism.
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I’m guessing none of the geniuses at Quantas has been on a long distance train. Guess what? It’s long and tiring, but otherwise fine.
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At least in the US, coach seats in aircraft are MUCH more cramped than those on long distance trains.
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SYD-DFW has a scheduled flight time of 15:15 including taxi time. Actual time in the air should be less.
The other direction has a scheduled flight time of 17:20.
It’s possible you hit some nasty headwinds, though. Or maybe you were clocking the time on the plane (including a ground delay) and not just time in the air?
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Myy grandfather flew on that. We used to have the “order of the double sunrise” certificate they handed out to passengers - i wish i knew where it was now.
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Theres a few subtle physiological differences between being on a spacious train at ground level and in a cramped aircraft at 40,000’. It’s left as an exercise for the reader to identify them …
All the passengers were in business class.
Doesn’t sound so bad!
strict restrictions were put in place, including […] destocking most of the bar.
I take that back.
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