B747

A steady drive south from New York on the I-95 with minimal breaks for Savannah’s historic district or a juicy Arby’s roast beef sandwich will get you to balmy Miami in Florida, in about 18 hours. It’s a long haul on arrow-straight freeways negotiating traffic and, perhaps, a spot of enlivening road rage.

It begs the obvious question, “Aren’t there easier places to get to with a coconut tree and a pink bikini?”

Like Singapore.

In fact, on the new Singapore Airlines A350-900 service from The Big Apple to Lion City with an official block time (chocks-off to gate) of 18 hours and 40 minutes, the flight can be completed in a shorter time. Buoyed by tailwinds, the inaugural flight on Nov 9 from Changi to JFK touched down in less than 17 hours to take on the mantle of the world’s longest flight currently in operation.

This was a mammoth undertaking for a crew of four pilots and a few passengers as the plane cut through the skies skirting Japan, Anchorage and Chicago (both in the United States) to complete 8,984 nautical miles (or 10,331 standard miles) burning 97.5 tonnes of aviation fuel.

Ultra-long-range flights at the farthest limits of machinery and man – at least for those packed like sardines for endless hours – have captured the imagination of airlines everywhere since the heroic late 2019 Qantas experiment flying non-stop from Sydney to New York and London. While these were not scheduled commercial flights, “Project Sunrise”, as Qantas termed the research exercise, served to arouse considerable public curiosity but was derided by plane buffs as a marketing gimmick with just a handful of passengers in fully reclining business seats, not your typical long-haul crush.

Crucially, behind the scenes Project Sunrise provided a conveniently large stick for Qantas to beat down feisty unions to renegotiate rosters and working hours, system wide.

Both Boeing – desperate for a comeback – and Airbus, pitched in with ideas with the latter suggesting a modified A350-1000. Qantas eventually ran with its existing fleet of B787-9 Dreamliners. Then came Covid-19. Demand and dreams crashed and, just three months after a brave rollout, the project was mothballed.

Several long-range flights in the 17-hour range have been operated with varying levels of commercial success – SIA’s Singapore-Newark, Qatar Airways’ Doha-Auckland (17 hours and 40 minutes), Dubai-Auckland by Emirates, and Perth-London by Qantas. Compared to these minnows, the Oct 20,2019 Qantas Project Sunrise flight from New York to Sydney was aloft a staggering 19 hours and 16 minutes.

This is a long way from my first international flight on an Air India B747 in the fall of 1977 that took me, hopping and stopping just about everywhere, from New Delhi to London, via Damascus, Rome, and Paris (if memory serves me well). We were handed Coca-Cola pours and I foolishly, if unwittingly, paid a small fortune to buy a glass or two of wine for the lady sitting next to me out of my fast dwindling US$21 foreign allowance.

It drove home the fine line between gallantry and the gallows.

It has to be said that the twin scourges of scarcity (money) and discomfort (seating) at a time when just being aloft was a novel experience, made flying all the more exquisite. We didn’t fly particularly high and I spent my time identifying natural features below that appeared close enough to touch.

The 1970s was for milk-stop runs before advancing technology ushered in the age of the long-haul non-stops that brought an abrupt end to the aspirations of several cities like my very own New Delhi, which fell off the map, as flights efficiently linked mega-hubs like Hong Kong to London, bypassing all the rest, consigning these doomed towns to a pink-eye 2am postscript. For travellers, India remains the “dark subcontinent”, even today.

Will travellers take to ultra-long-haul flights in 17-inch seats, battling deep vein thrombosis and boorish or bulky neighbours? Comments vary from, “It was really tough” (with PPE donned) to, “I must confess there were times I felt really irritable” (without Covid-19 protection on an earlier flight). Take your pick.

Of course there is the lure of maximised time at the destination in a world that frowns on long absences from the desk. Yet, as the globe hurries by without a chance to savour the changes in topography, culture, dialect and food as you hurtle through anonymous

latitudes and longitudes, going blotto on cheap plonk and small-screen entertainment, you miss out on the essence of travel – the journey, the immersion, the conversation, the unforeseen dramas, and the magnificent tales saved not on a smartphone but in the mind, that rarely used mushy bit between the ears.

While I often forget the specifics of various flights that monotonously blur into one another – “K for coffee” (translated as, “Care for coffee?”) or “Mepchu” (may I help you?) – I vividly recall our scorching three-day train journeys as kids

to spend the summers with our

stern paternal grandmother in Kerala, India, who dished out hymns, threats of a caning, and delicious dosas, all in one fluid motion.

En route, the platform tea was served in clay “kulads” that we later gleefully smashed on the rails. The soft drinks man heralded his arrival tinkling arpeggios with a metal rod on his ice-cold bottles. Bookstores with impossible names like Higginbotham’s sold James Hadley Chase and Louis L’Amour novels and Archie comics by the kilo.

Always sweet talked by some shifty train attendant, my mother would order giant ice slabs in leaking tin tubs to create the illusion of air-conditioning as water swamped our steamy compartment. “Train the fan on the ice, darlings, ” she’d coo as my brother and I sweatily went about the task too exhausted to object.

Would I trade all that for a 19-hour flight cocooned from fellow passengers and divorced from any sense of my regal, irritable, sleepless passage aloft? Hmm. Well, at least the air-conditioning on flights works better than ice blocks. A happy Covid-free New Year to all.

Vijay Verghese is a Hongkong-based journalist, columnist and the editor of AsianConversations.com and SmartTravelAsia.com

During a four-hour journey from Hamilton, Canada, to Marana, US, Sam Chui had the luxury of having the whole incredible plane to himself.

The travel blogger was invited onto the private jet – worth £158m ($200m) – by the current owner, CSDS aircraft sales and leasing .

Sam’s journey from Canada to the US was so that the aircraft, which has been on the ground for a year, could undergo maintenance and get a new paint job before it could be sold.

Even though he was in Mauritius at the time, the blogger decided to jump on the plane to Paris and then Toronto, before driving to Hamilton for his luxurious flight.

Being the only passenger on-board, Sam was granted a full-access tour of the Boeing 747SP, which would have carried up to 313 travellers.

He sat behind the pilots for the take-off, describing how it was “amazing” to watch the captain at work, then went to check out the rest of the plane, starting with the upper deck.

Sam showed 12 rows of “LA-Z-BOY” deep recliner seats, each with a storage area next to them.

Down a spiral staircase was a master bedroom and bathroom, then a full double as well as sofa in the bedroom, all decked out in plush leather.

The bathroom was also quite lavish, complete with gold fixtures. In another bathroom, there’s even a shower so you can freshen up before you get off the flight.

Sam showed a meeting room where a blue “throne” sat at one end of the room, flanked on both sides by leather chairs.

Down the corridor, there’s a meeting room, followed by more seats at the back of the plane – all had leather upholstery.

There’s also a private office and other seating spaces throughout the plane.

Speaking about the experience, Sam, who spent the four-hour flight trying out every seat on the plane, said: “I love the B747, I love luxury travel, I love classic aviation.

“What could be better than flying on a B747-SP Private Jet with a full VIP configuration? Even better, I had the whole plane to myself.”