October 8, 2025
Quaint seem the days when Pan Am executives sat in their Park Avenue skyscraper, scratching their heads over ways to make a 747 reach Tokyo without refueling. Only a few decades later, the advent of ultra long-haul aircraft has made almost any two cities on the map connectable without a stop. Variants of planes like the A350 and 787 can stay aloft for twenty hours. Once upon a time, “long haul” meant New York to London. Today it’s London to Perth.
I say almost. Qantas, for example, still hasn’t closed the gap on the so-called “grail route” between Sydney and London. “Project Sunrise,” as they’ve named it, is the airline’s plan to run flights from Sydney to London, Paris, and New York. The project kicked off in 2017, but certification and technical issues keep pushing things off, and the launch is now delayed until 2027.
Looking at the route maps, however, we see another unconquered frontier that seldom gets a mention: Asia to South America. No airline has ever flown a nonstop route between these two continents. (The closest we have is All Nippon Airways’ flight between Tokyo and Mexico City, which, because of the altitude of MEX, operates nonstop only on the eastbound leg.)
The reasons for this are both economic and technical: There isn’t enough passenger demand to warrant the expenses of operating such a flight, and the distances would challenge the capabilities of even the longest-range jet. The mileage between Tokyo and Lima — the most likely city-pair — is just about equal to the mileage between New York and Singapore, currently the longest flight in the world.
Tokyo-Bogota is a little shorter, but as with Mexico, Bogota’s 8000-foot elevation would pose restrictions. Anything else (Hong Kong to Rio, Tokyo to Santiago, etc.) is probably beyond the range of any existing aircraft.
China Eastern has announced a Shanghai-Buenos Aires flight, but the plane will make a two-hour stopover in Auckland for fuel.
I know what you’re thinking: who the heck wants to be in a plane for that long anyway? That’s a fair question, and the real challenges of long-haul flying are perhaps no longer technological so much as human. That is, how do you keep passengers comfortable, or even sane, on a journey stretching ten-thousand miles? We’re basically at the limits of what people can endure.
In first and business class, things have never been swankier or more luxurious, and there’s virtually no limit to how long passengers in these cabins can tolerate being aloft. But economy class is another story. No matter how many video channels or complimentary cocktails you give people, A nine-abreast row with 32-inch pitch simply isn’t bearable for nineteen hours.
Because of this, some carriers equip their longest flights with enhanced economy cabins. Singapore’s New York flights have no standard economy seats at all, going with a comfier Premium Economy instead. Air New Zealand sells a “Skycouch,” where a row of economy seats convert into a bed.
My personal distance record is a comparatively modest 6,830 miles, covered in sixteen hours and six minutes, on a Delta Air Lines 777-200LR from Detroit to Hong Kong several years ago (Delta no longer flies this route). That, enjoyably, was in business class.
On the other hand, there’s also the 6,925 miles, covered in fourteen hours and forty-six minutes, that I spent in economy aboard South African Airways flight SA202 from JFK to Johannesburg. (Notice how the second flight was a longer distance, but flown in less time.) I know it was exactly fourteen hours and forty-six minutes because there was a digital timer bolted to the bulkhead in front of me, feeding us a minute-by-minute update. Watching the hours tick by seemed a torturous proposition, until a certain passenger was bold enough to tape a piece of paper over the clock.
As to the longest flight I’ve ever piloted, that would be New York to Cairo — a proverbial puddle-jump by today’s metrics.
PHOTOS BY THE AUTHOR
Dubai boarding bridges
Dubai departure board
ANA arriving at Mexico City
On the apron in Doha
