For anyone who’s flown from Singapore to New York City, you know there’s no way around the fact that it will take a while. It is currently the world’s longest flight, soaring a distance of 9,534 miles. In other words, it would be like departing JFK Airport in New York, flying to Los Angeles, turning around and going directly to Boston, then making another U-turn and landing in Phoenix.
Thanks to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, that flight will now be the second-longest route globally. Cathay Pacific is preparing to redirect their flight from Hong Kong to New York to avoid Russian airspace. That means that instead of flying over the Pacific Ocean like it usually would, the flight would not soar across Europe and over the Atlantic Ocean before landing in NYC.
It would be a distance of 10,357 miles. A traveler could earn status on the airline by making one round-trip from Hong Kong to New York.
Here’s a statement the airline gave to CNN.
“We are always running contingency routings for potential events or scenarios within the world of aviation. The transatlantic option relies on the facilitation of strong seasonal tailwinds at this time of the year in order for the flight time to be between 16 and 17 hours, thereby making it more favorable than the transpacific route. We are monitoring the tailwinds situation daily as it is already tapering off.”
Cathay Pacific utilizes their fleet of Airbus A350-1000 planes. The one-way trip will take roughly 17 hours, and even though the trip is longer than usual, the plane has similar fuel consumption to the flights that went over the Atlantic.
To put this into perspective. You could push play on the movie Titanic when you take off on this flight, watch the film, sleep eight hours, then binge an entire season of The Walking Dead before landing.
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