By Nick
Lavars
October 20, 2019
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The Qantas
Boeing 787 touches down in Sydney (James D Morgan/Qantas.)
VIEW 4 IMAGES
In terms of international
flights, Qantas has notched up some impressive milestones of late. It has
recently pioneered the first
flights from Australia's west coast to London, and also kicked off non-stop
flights between Sydney
and Dallas/Fort Worth in the US. The latest is part of Qantas' Project
Sunrise, a research venture hoped to advance aviation technology so that
non-stop flights from Australia's east coast to London and New York also become
a possibility.
The test
flight was completed in a new Boeing 787-9, which re-routed its empty
delivery flight from Seattle to carry a total of 49
passengers and crew over the 16,200 km (10,066 mi) journey between the Big Apple
and Sydney.
The journey took 19 hours and 16
minutes in all, and being an experimental test flight Qantas collected a range
of data on the people onboard. This included monitoring melatonin levels,
alertness and also the brainwaves of the pilots, while the passengers were also
treated (or subjected) to exercise classes. Lighting and meal times were also
tweaked in a bid to lessen jet lag.
Meal times were adjusted to
tackle jet lag on Qantas' record-breaking 19-hour flight James D Morgan/Qantas.
“Night flights usually start with
dinner and then lights off," says Qantas CEO Alan Joyce. "For this flight, we
started with lunch and kept the lights on for the first six hours, to match the
time of day at our destination. It means you start reducing the jet lag straight
away."
The regular Qantas flight between
New York and Sydney with one stop along the way takes 22 hours and 20 minutes,
meaning that by doing it without having to touch down, Qantas shaved a good
three hours off the travel time.
"What’s already clear is how much
time you can save," says Joyce. "Our regular, one-stop New York to Sydney
service took off three hours before our direct flight but we arrived a few
minutes ahead of it, meaning we saved a significant amount of total travel time
by not having to stop."
Qantas is working with medical
researchers and scientists from Australia's Charles Perkins Centre and Monash
University to make sense of the in-flight data. The results will guide the crew
rostering and customer service for future ultra long-haul flights, while two
more are planned for the coming months – London to Sydney in November and then
New York to Sydney again in December.
Source: New Atlas URL:
https://newatlas.com/aircraft/qantas-record-breaking-19-hour-flight/Qantas