According to this news winging its way over from Australia, V Australia, which is the international arm of Virgin Blue, are expected to announce new non-stop flights to Perth from London in 2011.
This route would be the second longest in the world, with flight times of just 16 hours – a saving of 5 hours compared to the current shortest times, due to the fact that current flights to Perth need a change of aircraft. Even compared to existing sameplane flights to Australia, the non-stop service still offers a huge time advantage, as the routing is direct and there is no need to re-fuel.
This move will see the Virgin group continue its advancement as a truly pan-global company – although I hesitate to use the term ‘network’, since the airlines are each operated independently. An additional non-stop route between Sydney and New York will also be offered – another interesting development, as the majority of USA-Australia flights operate to west coast hubs such as Los Angeles and San Francisco.
It will be interesting to see what sort of fares are offered on this route – the economics of operating these ultra-long flights aren’t as simple as just finding a way to avoid an un-needed set of airport charges. For this type of flight, aicraft don’t just need extra fuel - they also need extra fuel to carry the fuel that they will need later on in the journey. For this reason, Singapore Airlines, which offers the current longest flight in the world between Singapore and New York Newark, operates a business-class only service, thus cutting down on weight.
They are also offering these virgin blue flights direct from Johannesburg to Perth
There is no obvious feedback link on the flightmapping site and I don’t have time to go digging around for ages to find the right place to send this, but I use the flightmapping site a lot and wanted to let you know that you are missing a route from your database.
Flybe from London Gatwick to Dusseldorf is not in the database.
Love the site, just want to make sure the quality of the info stays high so I can trust it.
Thanks very much!
Snoopy,
Many thanks for the feedback & update. Please bear with us, there is a new site due shortly which should be both updated & easier to feedback. Off the top of my head, the route you mention is now both Flybe & Easyjet, but I’m just doing a quick scoot around & prefer to work from memory rather than a database!
Yes, and there is the ‘all Virgin’ link from London to LA to Sydney to Hong Kong and back to London – but this proposed route is interesting because it would be the first non-stop UK-Australia flight.