It took four days and nine stops, overnighting in Cairo and Singapore, and cost £585 return – equivalent to a whopping 130 weeks’ average pay.
With news this week that Qantas is to fly direct from London to Perth from March 2018, in a mere 17 hours, air travel has certainly advanced – and become more affordable – since the 1940s.
London-Perth won’t even be the longest flight in the world; Emirates’ Auckland-Dubai route, which launched this year, holds that crown at 17 hours 20. And as aircraft become larger and more fuel-efficient, the ability to fly further and further non-stop will only increase.
But while new aircraft like the Dreamliner undoubtedly make the long-haul experience more comfortable, I wonder how many hours in an albeit comparatively comfortable economy seat is too many?
That’s 17 hours of cabin pressure, 17 hours of not sleeping (if you’re a fussy sleeper like me) and 17 hours staring at a screen a few inches from your face.
If they happened to be re-running Jurassic Park on one of these mega-flights, I think I’d find a particular resonance in Jeff Goldblum’s observation that “Your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn’t stop to think if they should”.
How appealing it will be to Brits flying to Melbourne and Sydney to stop over in Perth with Qantas, instead of breaking their journey in Singapore, Bangkok or Dubai, will also remain to be seen.
Flights of such lengthy durations might not be to every client’s taste, and destinations which have thrived on stopover business could suffer when longer-haul flights replace two-leg routes. But how incredible to think that aircraft can fly distances of almost 9,000 miles: close to half of the circumference of our planet.
The world is certainly becoming a smaller and smaller place.
Thank goodness for the space-available upgrade list.
