New 18-hour United flight to contend for title of world’s longest

United Airlines already flies the longest non-stop route of any U.S. airline. Now it’s ready to add a route that would become the longest of any carrier flying to or from the United States.
That will come this fall, when United plans to launch an 8,700-mile route connecting Los Angeles and Singapore. The service, which must be OK’d by regulators, would leapfrog past Qantas’ 8,576-mile Dallas/Fort-Worth-Sydney non-stop and United’s own 8,446-mile San Francisco-Singapore route to become the longest by distance of any airline flying to or from the USA.

It also would become the longest non-stop flight ever flown by a U.S. airline. The distinctions are not lost on United’s executives.
“It’s the longest route from the U.S. to anywhere in the world,” Patrick Quayle, United’s vice president – International Planning, tells USA TODAY’s Today in the Sky blog about the new L.A.-Singapore route. “It’s definitely prestigious.”

It also will become a contender for the world’s longest flight when measured by flying time. United’s projected time for the Singapore-bound portion of the journey: a whopping 17 hours, 55 minutes.
That would top Qatar Airways’ published flying time of 17 hours, 40 minutes for its 9,032-mile flight from Auckland, New Zealand, to Doha, Qatar — a route that’s currently regarded as the world’s longest.
And there will be yet another superlative for United’s new service: the L.A.-Singapore route would also become the world’s longest regularly scheduled route to be flown with a Boeing 787 “Dreamliner.”

Courtesy : USA Today