The world's longest flight
Emailed on October 18th, 2019 in The Friday Forward
I'm plagued with bad flying experiences. But all-in, they arent *that* bad.
This weekend Qantas Airways Ltd. will fly directly from New York to Sydney in what will become the world's longest non-stop flight (20hrs).
The flight leaves the U.S. today and lands in Australia during its Sunday morning.
This will be more than an endurance exercise. Scientists and medical researchers in the cabin will turn Qantas’s brand-new Boeing Co. Dreamliner into a high-altitude laboratory. They’ll screen the brains of the pilots for alertness, while monitoring the food, sleep and activity of the few dozen passengers.
The physical burden on customers is putting a renewed focus on jet lag, and creating a supermarket of products and home-made creations to ease the suffering.
The potential customer base for jet lag remedies is staggering. The International Air Transport Association expects some 4.6 billion people to take a flight in 2019, a total that will jump to 8.2 billion in 2037.
Demand for jet-lag therapies is growing at about 6% each year and the industry will be worth $732 million in 2023, according to BIS Healthcare.