World's longest flight—for how long?

A new claimant for 'world's longest flight' has stepped up, and it's Qatar Airways' new route from its base at Doha to Auckland, New Zealand, flying a 777-200ER.

At 16 hours and 23 minutes, it takes 4 pilots, a cabin crew of 15, and a couple of hundred passengers who ate over 1000 meals, 1100 hot drinks and 2000 cold drinks. The airline pointed out that the flight time was long enough to watch all three parts of the Lord of the Rings, which was shot in New Zealand.

Longest distance has become a bit of an airline competition these days; the new route is 14,535 km or 9,032 miles, barely beating out the previous record by Emirates, whose flight to Auckland from Dubai is 335 km shorter. But both will be trumped when Singapore Airlines relaunches its New York to Singapore route, which measures out at 9,521 miles or 15,323 km.

In case you're wondering...here's a table of the current 10 longest, all but 3 originating along the Persian Gulf.