Can 18 hours in the air be bearable? Airlines bet on ultra-long-haul flights

Last Thursday, the world’s longest nonstop flight — a 9,534-mile, 18-and-a-half-hour journey from Singapore to Newark on Singapore Airlines’ new Airbus A350-900 Ultra Long Range aircraft — touched down, raising the bar for super-long-haul travel, which most industry experts define as any flight over 8,000 miles one way. New, lighter and more fuel efficient, dual-engine aircraft — including the Airbus models and Boeing’s Dreamliner — make flying for nearly a day economically viable as the number of ultra-long-haul flights increases. Singapore’s new route, which takes 18 hours and 45 minutes in the opposite direction, isn’t the only rear-numbing new itinerary. In March, Qantas launched a London-to-Perth route. It is the third longest flight at about 9,000 miles, after Qatar Airways’s Doha-Auckland route. In September, Cathay Pacific Airways began flying 8,153 miles, its longest route, between its base in Hong Kong and Washington, D.C. In late November, Air NZ plans to add service between Auckland and Chicago, its longest flight at a distance of about 8,200 miles. As flight times grow, carriers are experimenting with everything from healthy menus to onboard gyms to make almost 20 hours in the air more bearable. Business classes are the beneficiaries of most of the new investment. Some airplanes, like SIA’s new craft, contain only business (a recent round-trip fare was $5,000) and what are called premium economy seats ($1,498 round-trip in December), which are more spacious than standard coach. But across the industry, even regular economy passengers will find extra perks. Story has more details.<br/>