Australian airline Qantas completed a 19-hour 19-minute test flight between London and Sydney, with a Boeing 787-9 Dreamliner aircraft carrying just 40 passengers, pilots and crew. It was an experiment on the longest trade route ever. The Boeing 787-9 Dreamliner took off Thursday morning from the UK local time and then landed in Sydney on Friday at lunchtime: “We've seen the sunrise twice,” Qantas Executive Director Alan Joyce said. A 787-9 Dreamliner can carry up to 300 people, but if full, including passengers and suitcases, it could not have covered such a long journey without refueling. During the test, he still had enough fuel for about another hour and 45 minutes when he landed. The first aircraft to cover this route without ever stopping was a Boeing 747-400 in August 1989, which however carried only the crew; now the plane is kept in a museum. By October, Qantas had completed a 19-hour test flight from New York to Sydney, a 1,600-kilometer shorter route.
During the flight, the passengers underwent a series of tests. The data collected will be part of the information that Qantas will use to ask the Australian authorities for permission to introduce round-trip connections London-Sydney, but also New York-Sydney, by 2022.
How to survive a 19-hour non-stop flight
