Qantas to start world’s longest 747 route

SYDNEY - Qantas would reportedly start its services on the world’s longest 747 route, flying 13,804 kilometres non-stop from Sydney to Dallas, Texas, later this year.

In 1989, Qantas had demonstrated a number of flights, Boeing 747-400, by flying non-stop from London to Sydney in over 20 hours time period. The trip required special “high specific gravity” fuel and there were no passengers.

Qantas is now venturing into using the model’s ultra-long range with a full load of passengers to fly 13,804 kilometres non-stop from Sydney to Dallas, Texas, the longest 747 route in the world, the Sydney Morning Herald reports.

In 2002-03, the airline took delivery of six 747-400Ers that were built specially for Qantas to operate the 12,748 kilometres from Melbourne to Los Angeles. This high-weight version will be stretched to the limit for the four weekly Dallas services, which start on May 16, the paper said. antas has been working to find out ways of flying to Dallas for years. However, the idea did not work because of the 2008-09 global financial crisis that caused massive losses on US routes for the Australian national carrier.

At the same time Virgin Blue’s V Australia and the US’s Delta Air Lines flooded the South Pacific with new seats - a capacity increase of about 30 per cent between Australia and Los Angeles.

“We’ve always wanted the opportunity to give more choices outside of the [US] west coast. With business travel recovering, the airline has had no qualms about killing off its four-weekly Sydney-San Francisco non-stop flights and switching them to Dallas, especially since the global oil industry, a major user of Qantas business travel, is headquartered in nearby Houston. A lot of things clicked on this and it made absolute sense for us to devote aircraft resources to this destination,” Qantas chief executive Alan Joyce, said. (ANI)