Lufthansa Is Operating Its Longest Flight Ever Next Month

Lufthansa plane

It's a fact that direct, non-stop flights are better than layovers, and soon, Lufthansa will be breaking its own record for the airline's longest non-stop flight.

According to The Points Guy, the German airline will soon be launching a flight from Hamburg to Mount Pleasant, a Royal Air Force station in the Falkland Islands off the coast of South America. Totaling to around 8,500 miles with a flight time around 15 hours, this will beat the airline's current longest flight, which totals 7,140 miles (13 hours in flight) between Frankfurt and Buenos Aires, Argentina.

While this new flight is not the longest in the world –– Singapore Airlines has that distinction with its 19-hour, 9,521-mile flight between Singapore and New York City. Qantas is also testing out super-long flights between Sydney and cities like London and New York.

Lufthansa Flight 2574 will carry 92 passengers aboard an Airbus A350-900, which typically seats 300 and has a range of 15,000 kilometers (9,320 miles), according to Airbus. Singapore Airlines uses the aircraft's ultra-long version (A350-900ULR) for its record-breaking 19-hour flight. Airbus touts this family of aircraft as the "future" of travel, since it was designed with greater fuel efficiency in order to withstand these extra long-haul flights, as well as its modern, upgraded cabin amenities like Wi-Fi and mobile phone connectivity.

Many of the passengers on the Lufthansa flight, scheduled for Feb. 1, will be scientists and researchers headed to Antarctica, according to The Points Guy. All passengers and crew will have to quarantine for 14 days due to the ongoing pandemic. 

Passengers will continue on to Antarctica via the Polestern (a research icebreaker ship). The flight will return as Flight 2575, with pilots, flight attendants, current crew of the Polestern (a research icebreaker ship), and any waste generated on the flight, according to The Points Guy.

Andrea Romano is a freelance writer in New York City. Follow her on Twitter @theandrearomano.

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