Flight from London to Sydney breaks 2 world records

The Qantas flight arrives in Sydney from London.
(Image credit: Mark Metcalfe/Getty Images)

It was a milestone decades in the making.

On Friday, a Qantas airplane loaded with 100 metric tons of jet fuel flew 11,060 miles from London to Sydney, nonstop. The journey lasted 19 hours and 19 minutes, and shattered two records, becoming the longest commercial airline passenger flight for both distance and duration, CNN reports.

The new Boeing 787-9 Dreamliner departed from Heathrow Airport at 6 a.m. Thursday morning, and flew over Germany, Russia, Poland, Belarus, Kazakhstan, China, the Philippines, and Indonesia. This was a test flight, and while the plane can hold up to 256 people, there were just 50 on board. All passengers were outfitted with monitors, and researchers from Australia's Charles Perkins Centre will study how sleep patterns, movement, and food consumption on an extremely long flight affect a person's health.

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE
https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/flexiimages/jacafc5zvs1692883516.jpg

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

The last time Qantas attempted to fly this route without stopping, it was 1989. The airline used a Boeing 747, ripping out most of the seats and loading the plane with as much fuel as possible, even towing it to the runway in order to conserve gas, CNN reports. "Flying nonstop from the east coast of Australia to London and New York is truly the final frontier in aviation, so we're determined to do all the groundwork to get this right," Qantas CEO Alan Joyce said. Qantas is hopeful it can start offering nonstop flights from London to Sydney and vice versa in 2022.

To continue reading this article...
Continue reading this article and get limited website access each month.
Get unlimited website access, exclusive newsletters plus much more.
Cancel or pause at any time.
Already a subscriber to The Week?
Not sure which email you used for your subscription? Contact us
Catherine Garcia, The Week US

Catherine Garcia is night editor for TheWeek.com. Her writing and reporting has appeared in Entertainment Weekly and EW.com, The New York Times, The Book of Jezebel, and other publications. A Southern California native, Catherine is a graduate of the University of Redlands and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.