A handful of nonstop routes keep passengers in the air for the better part of a day. These ultra long haul flights push aircraft and crews close to their limits, and they shrink the world in the process. Here are some of the longest, with the great-circle distance and the kind of flight time you can expect.
Distances below are straight-line great-circle figures. Real schedules run a bit longer because aircraft rarely fly the perfect line and have to account for wind, which on these routes can swing the time by more than an hour in either direction.
On flights this long, the wind is a serious factor. A strong jet stream tailwind can shave an hour off, while a headwind on the return can add one. That is why the eastbound and westbound versions of the same ultra long haul route are almost never the same length. We wrote more about that in why your return flight takes longer.
Curious how your own trip compares to these monsters? The FlightBeat calculator gives you the distance and estimated flight time between any two of more than 11,000 airports, and it accounts for wind direction so the numbers match reality rather than a flat great-circle guess.
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