[AMcWhirter]

Am starting this thread because, if this flight happens, it will be an interesting development.

Cathay Pacific is taking advantage of favourable tail winds between New York and Hong Kong (one direction only) to, it is hoped, to operate the world’s longest flight in terms of distance.

Cathay Pacific plans world’s longest non-stop flight

[cwoodward]

Alex, I am told that the flight will be probably need to be seasonal also. Due of course to seasonally changing weather patterns.
Cathay routes taken to/from Canada also change with the seasons and in the past also overfly Russian airspace on occasion. This will also need to change in the short term.

Cathay is of course British owned (subsidiaries of John Swire and Sons being the ultimate of the majority shareholding)but Hong Kong registered airline and as such could still properly overfly Russia as do mainland Chinese airlines still do.
Clearly Cathay management have decided to adopt a cautious (passenger pleasing ?) approach to the to the current situation.

[K1ngston]

[postquote quote=1207678]

Please correct me if I am wrong, but haven’t CX been flying that route for years? I seem to remember flying from JFK to HKG about 6-8 years ago? As I said I could be wrong and it might have been Boston but I am sure it was NYC?

[cwoodward]

Correct but not exactly – as I understand it-the previous routing was over Russia. This longer route NOT over Russia and fairly considerably longer. I have not checked how much longer but looks like close to a couple of hours.

[AMcWhirter]

Thanks for yourcomments.

Yes the previous route involved overflying Russia. And yes the new route is expected to be seasonal.

Quite correct re the head- and tailwinds. That is why SIA allows anything between 17 and 19 hours for its Singapore-New York non-stop depending on flight direction and time of year.

I realise Blooomberg has a strict paywall so you probably missed its illustration of the new route.

This tweet from Scott Rose shows both old and (planned) new routes.

Cathay Pacific Airways plans to reroute its New York-Hong Kong service to avoid Russian airspace, in what would be the world’s longest commercial passenger flight by distance.

It will take about 17 hours. https://t.co/e8MQxsp5UR by @JournoDannyAero pic.twitter.com/IsseaVIVXj

— Scott Rose (@rprose) March 29, 2022

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