Tomorrow I’m Flying On The World’s Longest Commercial Flight (I Must Be Mad!)

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This Traveling For Miles post is coming to you from sunny Auckland where I’m currently enjoying a particularly good flat white and thanking the weather gods for blessing my whirlwind trip with decent weather (every other time I’ve visited this city it’s been mostly grey and overcast….and I’ve always visited in the summer!).

I arrived in Auckland yesterday afternoon after having flown Malaysia Airlines’ A380 Business Class from London to Kuala Lumpur and then Malaysia’s A330 Business Class on to New Zealand (reviews of both will follow in due course).

I’m here for one reason and one reason only and that is to try out the “longest commercial flight in the world” which, at this moment is time, is Qatar Airways‘ Auckland to Doha route.

I should probably point out that there are two ways in which an airline can claim to have the longest flight in the world – longest by distance and longest by time taken to fly the route – and Qatar Airways’ latest route only holds one of those records.

The record for the longest commercial flight by distance is currently held by Air India for its Delhi – San Francisco route which, because of its routing over the Pacific, is over 9,400 miles long. Fortunately for passengers traveling this route the Jet Stream really helps out and the flight can take as little as 14.5 hours…although the route is scheduled for a maximum of 16 hours and 55 minutes just to be on the safe side.

Personally I care more about how many hours I have to sit in an aircraft seat that I do about the flight’s actual distance and that’s why Qatar Airway’s latest route demands attention.

Qatar Airways’ Auckland to Doha route is around 400 miles shorter but, because of the nature of the weather encountered on the route, it takes a lot longer. In fact the flight I will be taking tomorrow is scheduled to take an incredible 17.5 hours…

….but it may be even longer than that according to this tweet I got from Qatar Airways:

Qatar Airways launched this route yesterday (Sunday 5 February) but, at the time of writing, only the Doha to Auckland segment has been flown – the very first 17.5 hour flight is still in progress and is due to land in Doha around 22:00 local time (14:00ET/11:00PT).

Here’s an Infographic from Qatar Airways:

Unfortunately I won’t be on the very first “longest flight” (I’ll be on the second one) but then it’s all down to luck that I’m flying the route this early in its existence anyway.

This route was meant to have been launched back in December and, at the time, I couldn’t find room in my calendar to try out one of the early flights….so I used some AAdvantage Miles to book the flight I’m taking tomorrow. Then Qatar Airways started to have trouble with some of its aircraft deliveries and the route launch was pushed back to February….and here I am now.

Qatar Airways is operating the route with one of its 777-200LR (LR = Longer Range) aircraft and, although I’ll be firmly ensconced in the relative comfort of the Business Class cabin, I can honestly say that I’m not really looking forward to the experience.

Qatar Airways 777-200LR courtesy of Wiki Commons

Seventeen and a half hours is a very long time to be confined inside a pressurised aluminum tube and, as wonderful as Qatar Airways Business Class undoubtedly is, I’m not sure that’s going to be enough to make the experience pleasurable. Bearable probably…but almost certainly not pleasurable.

So why am I doing it? Well….because I thought I should.

If I’m going to write about these types of routes I should really have some experience of what it’s like to fly them and, when early last year I could see my rather large AAdvantage Miles balance about to get devalued quite significantly, using some miles to book this flight seemed like a good idea.

The thing is that the trip isn’t just going be Auckland to Doha….it’s going to be a lot longer than that. When I get to Doha I have a 9 hour layover (I plan on using the sleep pods in the First Class lounge) before I then fly on to Paris where I’ll then catch a flight back to London.

• 12,000+ miles
• Total scheduled flying time approximately 26 hours
• Total trip time approximately 37.5 hours

I’m not young anymore…this could kill me! 🙂

Still, as long as I survive, I am looking forward to being able to report back on what it’s like to do a flight of this length and I’ll do my best to write it up and post my thoughts this week (UPDATE: the full review is now live). Unfortunately the Qatar Airways 777-200LR doesn’t come equipped with WiFi so I won’t be able to share the journey “live”but I’ll do my best to capture what the journey is like when I post to this blog.

Anyone else planning on flying this route anytime soon? If you are, why?!