Post: #1

Here's an interesting article on the longest flights worldwide. I was curious if anyone here flies these, or similar routes, and how you cope with that much time in the air.

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/worlds-lon...55905.html

P.S. Someone feel free to copy and paste the article correctly to thread. Thanks.

Post: #2

Those are the longest non-stop flights as I'm sure everyone had a much longer connected flights.

The longest non-stop I took so far was SFO-MNL, 14 hours. Watched a movie for two hours and slept the rest.

Post: #3

I've done Mumbai to NY....was about 16 hours and then another time I did Delhi to Chicago. Looking back I wished I had asked about a business class upgrade. Maybe would have been worth it.

Post: #4

NY to Japan was 14 hours. Rough flight. I'm a big guy and don't fit too well in those small Asian seats on Japan airways.

Post: #5

I did the Houston-Doha route last year. It was rough. I was with the wild bunch in the airport and we got hammered before the flight, so I slept a good deal of it. Qatar Airways coach felt like biz class. The seat size and onboard entertainment made it less painful.

Anymore, I consider stopping at the halfway point and spending the night. It helps with jetlag. Even an 8 hr layover somewhere helps. 16 hrs in the air continuously is hard.

Post: #6

Man, some of those flights are intensely long!

Flying from here to Amsterdam (including connecting flight!) isn't as long as most of those flights. Jesus.

Post: #7

I was on a 16 hour flight from Chicago to Hong Kong.... it sucked, towards the end of the flight my throat started getting a little sore, then next few days after my flight my throat was crazy sore. I noticed toward the end of the flight lots of people on the plane were coughing.

Post: #8

Man. Those are some long flights! The only double digit flight I've ever done was Dusseldorf (Germany) to San Francisco non-stop.

The next longest non-stop flights I've done have been in the 8 to 10 hour range: SF - London, DC - Rio de Janeiro, DC to Frankfurt, Paris to DC....

I expect to fly to Australia either this year or next at the latest. That will break all of my previous records.

Post: #9

I know this approach isn't for everybody, but when I have to fly from the northeast U.S. to Hawaii or Asia, I like to start out by crossing the country by train (2½ to 3½ days, depending on which northeastern and west coast cities you're going between), and then continuing over the Pacific by air. That cuts out enough flying time to make a difference in tolerability, and also allows you to adjust gradually to the first three hours of the time zone change. I'm equally happy to do the reverse procedure on the eastbound trip. Of course, incorporating a cross-country train trip is only truly comfortable if you spring for a sleeping car room, which can be very expensive if you're traveling during a heavy-travel period and/or if you don't make your reservation far in advance. And unfortunately, even though a sleeping car room can be a great sexual venue (one of my fondest travel memories is of fucking my way from L.A. to D.C. a few years ago with an Asian-American girlfriend I'd just gotten back together with), in general your chances of getting laid on a train are pretty slim, mostly because women tend to stay away from the lounge cars late at night--I assume because they want to avoid being hit on by horny male passengers. While I have managed a few make-out sessions and a near-lay with newly met women on overnight train trips in the past, frankly I'm reluctant to take any perceptible steps to pick up women on trains, because I'm a big supporter of passenger rail service, and I hate the thought of contributing to a perception on the part of America's women that Amtrak trains (or whatever other kind of passenger trains) are "full of creepers and perverts". (On the other hand, I have no problem at all with trying to pick up women on planes and at airports, since even if my activities were to cause some tiny amount of damage to the public's basically high opinion of air travel--and of course it's essentially impossible that my activities could do that--frankly I wouldn't care.)

You could also incorporate a cross-country train trip into journeys between the U.S. west coast and Europe, the Middle East, or Africa. And if you were a person of real high style and you could make the times work, crossing the Atlantic on the Queen Mary 2 as part of your journey would perhaps be the ultimate way to avoid uncomfortable flying conditions and jet lag.

Post: #10

I've done London to NY. Not very long but it's longest I've done.

I played tetris for an hour. Got my high score up to 44k. Then towards the end of the flight I look to my left and my Thai friend is playing the same game, his score? 233,000 and still going. Those tetris blocks were shooting down the screen like fucking bolts of lightning and this fucking guy isn't even breaking a sweat. I watched him for 10 minutes lean back in his chair with a bored expression on his face and just felt like a moron.

Here's the kicker; he didn't even lose! The screens turned off because we were coming in to land.
I haven't played tetris since.

Post: #11

Most of my flights are long haul, 12hrs+. Longest journey time was from UK to Australia but it wasn't continous, that took around 24hrs. My recent journey to Thailand took around 20hrs due to a long stopover in Dubai airport. Longest continos journey is probably UK to Hong Kong or elsewhere in Asia.

Post: #12

I just did Sydney to LA a month ago and have to do it again next week to get back home. Not looking forward to that at all. I'll lose a day because of time difference. Leaving on the 4th, arriving on the 6th of April.

Post: #13

Try flying from Melbourne Australia to anywhere in the northern hemisphere.
I have done many Australia to Europe flights with stop overs etc.... feeling like an endless journey just to get somewhere. Ah the joys of travel

Post: #14

Ho Chi Minh City --> LAX (connecting flight) --> Newark. After layovers and everything it was a good 21 hour trip. The trip from HCMC to LAX was no joke

Post: #15

Now, if you want to talk about bus rides (South America), the length of those trips blow these flights out of the water....

Post: #16

Buenos Aires to Frankfurt with Lufthansa. Thankfully in Business class on a good old 747-400. Going to miss those big babies for sure.

Post: #17

HC, I've done long bus rides too. 30 hours, 2 days, 19 hours etc...

Thing is, they take rest stops and you can walk around and stretch your legs, get food etc.
Plus you have stuff to look at out the window. On a plane if you look out for 2 seconds you've seen the view that's not gona change for the whole flight.

Air travel is not fun at all. Unless you're in business or first. Coach is fucking torture. Those chairs are the most uncomfortable things ever made.

Post: #18

(04-01-2012 08:47 PM)trainwreck Wrote:  Buenos Aires to Frankfurt with Lufthansa. Thankfully in Business class on a good old 747-400. Going to miss those big babies for sure.

Lufthansa is the best goddamn airline I've ever flown with. German efficiency at its finest.

Post: #19

(04-01-2012 09:03 PM)Walnuts Wrote:  HC, I've done long bus rides too. 30 hours, 2 days, 19 hours etc...

Thing is, they take rest stops and you can walk around and stretch your legs, get food etc.
Plus you have stuff to look at out the window. On a plane if you look out for 2 seconds you've seen the view that's not gona change for the whole flight.

Air travel is not fun at all. Unless you're in business or first. Coach is fucking torture. Those chairs are the most uncomfortable things ever made.

Yeah that's true.

Post: #20

NY to Rio, 10 1/4 hours. And that was after spending several hours on the tarmac, because it was a raging February snowstorm in NY. Planes were backed up trying to take off, then they have to de-ice periodically. Pure misery. This was before they passed the law that they have to take you back to the terminal if they can't take off inside of 3 hours. I fly regularly from NY to LA and Vegas, so NY to London, and Rome, were nothing for me. I try to fly very early morning, or take very late flights so I will be tired and sleep most of the way. NY to Merida, Mexico was brutal also, but at least it was broken up by one stop to go through customs, then another in Mexico City (where I had to sleep a few hours in a deserted terminal), then get another flight on Mexicana Airlines that made a few stops - like a city bus until I landed in Merida. The trip back wasn't as bad.

I definitely want to hit Melbourne, Australia, and I'm not looking forward to the flight. I'd love to be in a position to hit parts of Asia from there, instead of having to endure separate trips. I've never been to Hawaii either, and that will be brutal. I've thought about stopping in LA for a couple of days to hang with friends, then continuing on.

Has anyone here ever flown on one of those massive double-decker airbuses? I've seen a couple of them on the ground (here in NY, and in Rome), and I'm wondering if the seating is more comfortable in terms of leg room.

Post: #21

Quote:Now, if you want to talk about bus rides (South America), the length of those trips blow these flights out of the water....

Yeah I did 28hrs on a supposed VIP bus with a broken seat. They fed us once and there was no free wine like I'd had on previous buses.

Post: #22

St. Louis to Amsterdam was the longest flight I've taken. Eight or so hours, I think. Almost went crazy.

I've wanted to hit Argentina for a minute. The flight would drive me nuts. Now-a-days, SFO to JFK is too much.

Post: #23

(04-01-2012 11:07 PM)AlphaTravel Wrote:  

Quote:Now, if you want to talk about bus rides (South America), the length of those trips blow these flights out of the water....

Yeah I did 28hrs on a supposed VIP bus with a broken seat. They fed us once and there was no free wine like I'd had on previous buses.

Was this in Chile? I did an epic bus ride from Arica (near the Peruvian border) down to Valparaiso. It was like 28 hours. Definitely a record. As torturous as those bus rides in South America were, they really helped me get over my inability to sleep on buses and planes. I used to not have the ability to keep my eyes closed. Now, I can sleep like a baby thanks to those experiences.

Also, I had no idea beforehand how long Chile is vertically just from looking at it on a map. If you stretched it horizontally across the United States, it would easily surpass the distance between the east and west coasts. Arica is at the top of Chile and Valparaiso is not even yet at the center of the country, and that was 28 hours. The roads were perfectly paved and advanced too. Crazy.

Post: #24

I flew from Seoul to Rome last summer. Very uncomfortable.

Post: #25

Quote:Was this in Chile?

It was and was from Santiago to San Pedro De Atacama if I remember correctly. It actually wasn't too tortuous, I had a few beers and a couple small bottles of wine with me, had valium and a friend (tho after 1 valium he slept for almost the whole 24hrs) for company. They played movies most of the way. The biggest problem really was the landscape barely changed for the whole journey. When I woke up in the morning it was baren desert wasteland and 18hrs later it was still baren desert wasteland. Worth it when got to San Pedro De Atacama though, ended up at a mad desert rave with some crazy locals and then went off to see Salar De Uyuni on a 3 day trip that was immense.