Ultra long-haul

The end of ultra long-haul flying is being heralded, despite dozens of routes still supporting flights over 14 hours – a long time in the pointy end, let alone in the seats down the back.

Cashing in a wad of American Express points for a “get it while it’s gone” long weekend featuring the Newark-Singapore flight recently, I concluded over 18 hours and two sunsets that, while an impressive feat of human engineering, there’s nothing on an all-business, ultra long-haul flight that can’t be replicated elsewhere.

Exclusive, quiet, spacious business class cabin that extends the length of the plane? SQ already has that in its second tranche of A380s, which have an all-business upper deck.

I was struck by how the all-business A340-500’s cabin experience was remarkably similar to being upstairs on the A380, and the smaller jet lacked the useful seat-side window bins on the superjumbo.

A chance to reset your body clock with a really good sleep? The replacement option for my SQ21 flight, SQ25 via Frankfurt, consists of a 7h50 leg to Europe, a 1h50 layover in FRA and a 12h onward flight to Singapore. SQ’s offering is probably the weakest of its competitors here – an eastbound night flight with a 2000 departure time means a wakeup at 0300 body time for a bleary transit stop.

Numerous other airlines have a longer leg to northeast Asia first, which makes more sense for travellers acclimated to New York time, as I discovered: I went flat for nine hours after dinner and then alternated between napping, working and movies. Much of the plane did the same.

And, frankly, I wouldn’t have minded a shower in a transit lounge after the long sleep in a cabin heated to Singaporean comfort levels either.

Saving three hours over the fastest one-stop? The problem with the timing of SQ21 is that you arrive before 0600 and often much before given that the flight has a wide range of favourable winds to select.

Singapore is by no means an early morning city and the efficiency of Changi meant I was at the taxi stand (paying a 50 per cent before-6am surcharge) 20 minutes after landing. Many of the airport’s convenient shops (for SIM cards and so on) aren’t open and Singapore’s hotels aren’t particularly amenable to early check-in. The cachet of flying more than 15,000km in one fell swoop? The frisson of all-business class excitement? As someone who flew the route just to have flown the route, it didn’t actually feel much longer than my return leg, which was via Taipei on EVA Air’s very comfortable reverse herringbone 777-300ER Royal Laurel seat. Fifteen hours rather than 18 hours is a good movie and a few glasses of SQ’s very best Bollinger (or on EVA, Dom Pérignon).

And there’s the rub: ultra long-haul isn’t going away, it’s becoming the norm. Qantas will inherit the nonstop crown with QF7 from Sydney to Dallas (despite the Brisbane stopover on the return). Boeing 787 and Airbus A350 jets both have the legs to serve 15,000km missions fully loaded. The existing 777‑200LR is a key player in its niche and the much more mainstream Boeing 777‑300ER does reach LA, Houston and San Francisco from Dubai, if somewhat weight-constrained. Next-generation versions of the 777 (is it too early to call the big twinjet “venerable”?) will be even more flexible.

For the foreseeable future, 18-hour flights are disappearing, replaced by numerous options tailored to your personal connection taste.

But burning fuel to carry fuel was never going to be widespread at the fuel prices of a decade ago, and it certainly isn’t now. We are, at a minimum, several generations of engine technology away from it being conceivable to run 21-hour flights to London rather than 23-hour connections. And for passengers not spending big money (or big frequent flyer points) for the seats up front, sitting in a single position for that long without a chance to stretch mid-journey seems torturous.

Still, the world needs to be crossed. And airlines that can make that chance to stretch and revive travelling bodies the fastest and most pleasant – a nicer version of the quick fuel stops of old – will reap the benefits.

Ultra long-haul is dead. Long live ultra long-haul.