{"id":4716,"date":"2018-10-09T11:40:59","date_gmt":"2018-10-09T07:40:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.uaebarq.ae\/en\/?p=4716"},"modified":"2018-10-09T11:40:59","modified_gmt":"2018-10-09T07:40:59","slug":"worlds-longest-nonstop-flight","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.uaebarq.ae\/en\/2018\/10\/09\/worlds-longest-nonstop-flight\/","title":{"rendered":"World’s longest nonstop flight"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\u00a0<\/cite>Singapore\u00a0to\u00a0New York, nonstop. Almost 19 hours in the air.<\/div>\n
Starting October 11, 2018, passengers on Singapore Airlines’ newest plane, the Airbus A350-900 ULR — for Ultra Long-Range — will travel on a record-breaking, globe-spanning flight that will reconnect the two major metropolises.<\/div>\n
The airline\u00a0used to fly the gas-guzzling, four-engine A340-500 on the 9,500-mile route, with just 100 business-class seats on board. The service proved to be inefficient, and Singapore Airlines canceled the flights in 2013.<\/div>\n
The new flights will initially run three times a week from Singapore to Newark Liberty International Airport, with daily operations starting October 18 after a second Airbus A350-900 enters service.<\/div>\n
On September 22, the airline took delivery of Airbus’ newest wide-body, the A350-900 ULR. It has 22 A350-900 planes in its fleet, with 45 more on order, including six more of the ULRs.<\/div>\n
On April 23, the plane had its first test flight, an almost five-hour round-trip that launched from the airframer’s assembly plant in Toulouse, France.<\/div>\n
The ULR will be able to fly a remarkable 11,160 miles, an increase of more than 1,800 miles over the standard A350. It means that Singapore Airlines will reclaim a\u00a0travel<\/a>\u00a0crown: that of running the world’s longest nonstop air route.<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
But how will passengers comfortably fly — or perhaps endure — a flight that lasts the better part of a full day?<\/div>\n
That’s three hours longer than the\u00a0Qantas Airlines 787 flight from Perth to Londonexperienced in March by CNN’s Richard Quest.<\/div>\n
“The A350 is a clean-sheet design that has been designed for those long-range flights,” Florent Petteni, Airbus’ aircraft interiors marketing director for the A350, tells CNN Travel.<\/div>\n
All A350s share Airbus’ design philosophy that makes the aircraft cabin feel more like a room, rather than a long tube. The plane has high ceilings, sophisticated LED lighting, almost vertical sidewalls and a low noise level.<\/div>\n
These features, along with a maximum in-cabin simulated altitude of just 6,000 feet, all combine to provide an improved passenger experience, according to Petteni.<\/div>\n
“You may not exactly pinpoint why it’s so comfortable and so nice to be flying on this airplane, but everything was done on purpose.”<\/div>\n
Like the windows.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
The A350’s fuselage is made from composite materials, including carbon fiber — rather than using conventional aluminum construction techniques. This allowed Airbus to include wide, panoramic windows. Lots of windows.<\/div>\n
“We have no missing windows. Whenever a passenger selects a window seat, they will always get a window,” says Petteni. This eliminates the dreaded “windowless” window seat found on other aircraft.<\/div>\n
But given the ultra long-range mission of the ULR, it was equally important to ensure that the cabin can be made fully dark, to give passengers a restful sleep environment.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
Airlines will have the choice between a standard pull-down shade, or an electro-mechanical, push-button system, with two cabin-darkening blinds.<\/div>\n
The air circulation system on the A350 has also been designed to be quiet and draft-free.<\/div>\n
“So even though we recycle the air in the full capacity of the cabin every two to three minutes, we do it in a way that we reduce the velocity of the air inside the cabin,” says Petteni.<\/div>\n

Fill ‘er up<\/h3>\n<\/div>\n
Compared to the standard A350-900, the ULR will haul an additional 24,000 liters of fuel to fly its 20-hour missions.<\/div>\n
Along with the stretch A350-1000, the family of planes shares basically the same wing structure. That structure includes a common-sized center fuel tank.<\/div>\n
“All that we are doing on the ULR is to use all of the volume that we have in the center tank, a bit more than the usage that we have for the -1000,” explains Marisa Lucas-Ugena, head of A350 marketing.<\/div>\n
“We put in additional pipes and drains so that we can get usage of the entire volume. For the [standard] -900 we’re not using the entire space that we have.”<\/div>\n
That additional fuel weighs about an extra 20,000 pounds. And just like any other aircraft, the ULR’s operators will have to trade on the payload\/range equation.<\/div>\n
If you want to fly far, you must carry more fuel. That fuel adds more weight, so you must then reduce the rest of the payload.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
A manufacturer could increase the maximum take-off weight (MTOW) of the plane, the airline could limit the number of passengers or amount of cargo carried, or there could be a combination of both.<\/div>\n
Airbus has upped the ULR’s MTOW to 280 tons, five tons more than the standard airframe.<\/div>\n
The\u00a0interior configuration\u00a0of Singapore Airlines’ ULRs features 67 business class seats and 94 premium economy seats.<\/div>\n
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As expected, there are far fewer than the 253 seats in the airline’s standard A350-900s.<\/div>\n
In addition to the fuel system changes, the ULR sports a host of aerodynamic updates, include longer version of the A350’s elegant winglets.<\/div>\n

Call of nature<\/h3>\n<\/div>\n
No matter the number of people on board, Airbus feels sure that the ULR’s lavatory and water systems are up to the challenge of a 20-hour flight.<\/div>\n
“There are no changes to the capacities, just optimization,” explains Lucas-Ugena. “That’s something that we do at Airbus, when we have a family of airplanes, any time we have a new type or a new modification, we take the opportunity to improve things.”<\/div>\n
Perhaps another Airbus concept will find its way into the ULR.<\/div>\n
At the Aircraft Interior Expo in Hamburg earlier this year, the company, along with aircraft interiors manufacturer Zodiac Aerospace, unveiled a proposal for “Lower Deck Modules” that would feature\u00a0sleeping quarters for passengers.<\/div>\n
Located in the space normally filled with cargo containers, passengers would access bunk beds via a stairway from the main deck.<\/div>\n
Sweet dreams.<\/div>\n
–<\/div>\n
CNN<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u00a0Singapore\u00a0to\u00a0New York, nonstop. Almost 19 hours in the air. Starting October 11, 2018, passengers on Singapore Airlines’ newest plane, the Airbus A350-900 ULR — for Ultra Long-Range — will travel on a record-breaking, globe-spanning flight that will reconnect the two major metropolises. The airline\u00a0used to fly the gas-guzzling, four-engine A340-500 on the 9,500-mile route, with …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":4721,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4716","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uaebarq.ae\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4716","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uaebarq.ae\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uaebarq.ae\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uaebarq.ae\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uaebarq.ae\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4716"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.uaebarq.ae\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4716\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4726,"href":"https:\/\/www.uaebarq.ae\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4716\/revisions\/4726"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uaebarq.ae\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4721"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uaebarq.ae\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4716"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uaebarq.ae\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4716"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uaebarq.ae\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4716"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}