Air India (AI) has recently earned a record of operating the world’s longest nonstop flight, with their now flying Delhi to San Francisco over the Pacific Ocean instead of the Atlantic. Covering a distance of 15,300 km in 14.5 hours AI sets the world record for the longest nonstop flight.
The Pacific route is around 1,400km longer than the Atlantic route and the flight covered 115,300 kilometers in 14.55 hours. The AI Delhi-SFO-Delhi flight now does a round trip of the world as it flies back to India over the Atlantic to get tailwinds on both the outbound and inbound flights. The Boeing 777 200 used on this route burns an average 9,600 litres of fuel for each hour of flying
The 4 pilots, Captain Rajneesh Sharma, Gautam Verma, MA Khan and SM Palekar and the 10 cabin crew members were ecstatic at setting the record.
At present the longest nonstop commercial flight was operated by the Emirates, from Dubai to Auckland covering almost 14,120 km.