Of course, international travel is also cheaper than ever.

The way to be comfortable on a long flight is to pay for it.

You can find premium economy seats to Japan for $1,500 and business class for $2,500. It wasn’t that long ago when those sort of prices were the economy ticket.

I see a good amount of $400 economy fares that’ll stick you on a plane for upwards of 10 hours. It’s an incredible value. A lot of people making that trip can just upgrade to either an extra legroom seat or premium economy and they’ll still be spending less than they did not even 10 years ago.

I'm surprised that this ever became a thing. I've done lots of Sydney to X long haul flights. When the A380 first came out I mentioned the fact of Sydney to London non stop to a stewardess, and she said that it'll probably not happen because of staffing issues: That is, a long haul involves a stop, generally 9 to 12hrs in. At that point the whole crew changes over. However, you can't keep the same crew on call for 20hrs without paying them, even if not actually on duty. That is, the staff requirement doubles for the long haul flights. It must've been worked out tho, to allow this one.

Even on a 12 hour flight the staff are required to rest in the crew rest area. I guess they will either rotate resting staff back on or block out some of business class for crew rest. The real issue is that the staff will have to rest downroute for a long time and be grounded more due to cosmic radiation limits.

Airplanes for such long distance flights already have crew rest areas. Here's an article that talks about the ones for the 787:

https://www.executivetraveller.com/here-s-where-qantas-pilot...

All long haul jets have crew rest areas but, having stayed in then myself, I'm not sure if they have sufficient space for multiple crews e.g you would probably need three sets of people on the flight deck unless they rotate the first set back in.

Most long haul flights have 2 complete 2-person flight crews. Generally comprised of Captain, first officer, and 2 second officers. Rotation is such, that at any one time, either the Captain or the First officer is on the flight deck with one of the two second officers.

Critical parts of the flight (such as take off and landing) will have the two most senior pilots in command, but less demanding parts in cruise, one of the second officers will be backing up one of the senior crew while the other 2 crew members have mandated rest.

Because these are 'hot bunks', you only need 2 available for the flight crew at any time. I assume the cabin crew have a similar rotation system.

London to Sydney has good stopover points, since you are over land about half way through the trip. North American to Sydney doesn't have a good stopping place in the middle, if you only have a few more hours to you may as well just get there instead of stopping.

Pardon my ignorance, but what about Honolulu?

The detour it too far. Remember the earth not flat: the shortest line is curved not straight. The most direct route typically goes too far north. A stop in Russia or China would make more sense, but even than the detour is a bit too much.

> The most direct route typically goes too far north.

This only happens when departure and arrival are both in the Northern Hemisphere, if that's the case, great circle routes appear as curved towards the North when plotted on a 2D map.

But here we are going from Northern to Southern hemisphere, so the great circle route will appear S-shaped, and the middle section will not be very far away from a straight line drawn on a 2D map.

This is the great circle route SFO-SYD, Honolulu is pretty close as you can see http://www.gcmap.com/mapui?P=sfo-syd

I'm just a lowly PPL so I have zero practical experience with this kind of route planning, what am I missing here? https://i.succ.in/6mEsINqD.png

I just don't see how you could reasonably stop in Russia or China while flying from the US to Sydney.

Different routes go different directions. Try flying from farther north. Also try flying to the western shore of Australia.

I don't think there's much demand for direct flights to Western Australia, there's not much there. Surprisingly Qantas does fly a PER-LHR route.

But yeah, I don't think there exists a NA<->AU route with practical stops in China or Russia https://i.succ.in/6myR8ZFQ.png

Looking at the great circles Honolulu is probably fine, however there may be other issues than the location.

You are right, this is the great circle route SFO-SYD http://www.gcmap.com/mapui?P=sfo-syd

Yup I did a 22 hour bus ride in South America, bumpy, constantly turning. I'm 6'5 and get motion sickness.

The layback seats made me enjoy it far more than even a 5 hour flight.

This.

I regularly travel both business class and premium economy, and especially on an overnight flight I feel fresh after business and sore after premium economy.

Absolutely. I guess the point of my post above is that sometimes you can put a little effort in to engineer the best outcome (or just have lady luck smile upon you) in order to make the difference between hours of torture or hours of bliss. Just picking an airline which uses the 787 instead of an older model is huge.

I hope that airlines like Qantas etc. realise that on these extra long flights, people like myself are more than willing to pay a little extra for small comforts like plenty of leg room or space to get up and walk/stretch at regular intervals.

I have found any airline flight using a 787 to be significantly more expensive.

I am assuming that is because most 787 operators are 'full service' airlines rather than budget carriers, who generally run cheaper or second hand 737s or A320s.

Then again, I just came back from Europe in a Scoot 787. Scoot are the 'budget' arm of Singapore Airlines, but I guess with the wealth of Singapore, their budget carrier is the equivalent of most other full service carriers.

Pretty much.

I flew once on a business class in a 10+ hour flight. I slept so well. The food was great. It was so relaxing. I bet first class would have been even better. I wouldn't mind flying for 20 hours in a business class.

> To whomever downvoted this

I haven't downvoted, but I'm having problems with the last sentence

> we need an honest study, and subsequent class lawsuit.

Honest stud exist for many years [0] and it's common knowledge in every tourist guide [1].

Class lawsuit is a very American thing, let's sue everyone regardless of proof or if the condition can be avoided by the persons themselves.

Even the link between flight and DVT is not 100% clear [2], although there seems to be a good mechanism explaining it:

> not all experts agree that air travel is a direct cause of thrombosis due to a lack of large-scale population studies. Such studies are difficult to evaluate, in that the extended period between flight time and presentation of DVT or PE symptoms induces variability.

The conclusion of this [3] research is somewhat disturbing:

> Moreover, given the low incidence of DVT in the general population we may never know if air travel increases the risk of DVT because studies with the required sample size to detect a significantly increased risk are unlikely to be sponsored.

[0] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1989755/ [1] https://www.cdc.gov/ncbddd/dvt/travel.html [2] https://www.stoptheclot.org/learn_more/air_travel_and_thromb... [3] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC434500/

I think you replied to the wrong parent? Can't see anyone talking about class action lawsuits.

Anyway, considering the stringency of aviation regulations designed to mitigate already very small risks, I think it would be consistent to force passengers to get up and have a walk once in a while (if this would indeed mitigate the risk of DVT). Obviously airlines would never take this step, but they could at least recommend it, or the FAA could enforce it.

The comment you seem to be replying to is here:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21287629