Qatar Airlines Sets The New Record For Longest Flight

If you’re an air travel fanatic, have a need to travel from Qatar to New Zealand or you simply want to be a part of history, you may want to consider taking the longest commercial flight ever.

Qatar Airlines just stole the number one slot for the world’s longest regularly scheduled commercial flight. The distance? 9,031 miles from Doha, Qatar, to Auckland, New Zealand.

The flight duration? The inaugural flight took 16 hours and 23 minutes, and the return trip was expected to take a bit longer at 17 hours and 30 minutes.

It turns out there is one other flight does travel a longer route. Air India has a 9,408-mile outbound flight from Delhi to San Francisco, but the return flight goes a much shorter distance, apparently, making the overall flight route shorter than Qatar Airlines’ new route.

So, that’s how the Qatar flight which traveled on Feb. 5 stole the slot for longest commercial flight on record. To put the duration into perspective, Conde Nast Traveler points out that while aboard the nearly 17-hour flight there were four rotating pilots, 1,100 cups of coffee and tea served, and there’d have been enough time to watch six consecutive World Series baseball games while in-flight. So, yeah. That’s an incredibly long time to be on-board a plane.

Meanwhile, it seems that Qatar Airlines may not hold into its longest flight record for long: Singapore Airline has announced plans to bring back its Singapore to New York route in 2018, which would have Qatar beat with a distance of 9,500 miles.

How far will we be able to push the limit? Only time will tell. But, for now, if you want to take the world’s longest flight, you’ll have to get yourself to Doha to then make your way to Auckland. We’re tired just thinking about all that travel!