Travel Megatrends 2020: The Rise of Ultra-Long-Haul Flights Is Changing the Way We Travel
Photo Credit: More airlines are launching ultra-long-haul flights, making it easier for travelers to fly nonstop between large cities. Skift
Skift Take
Connecting to the ends of the Earth with nonstop flights is an increasingly attractive prospect for flyers. The growing popularity of nearly day-long flights, however, is set to disrupt the economics of the airline business. Adapting will be crucial as demand from the travel industry grows.
Skift Megatrends 2020
We recently released our annual travel industry trends forecast, Skift Megatrends 2020. Download a copy of our magazine here and read on for highlights online.
Qantas in October 2019 scored a coup with its first-ever direct flight from New York to Sydney, a record 20 hours of nonstop travel. The ultra-long-haul flight garnered plenty of headlines, but more meaningful is that it underscored a trend that will change flying in the years to come.
Airlines for decades often sought to fly the biggest aircraft they could on routes between the largest cities, pushing passengers through megahubs in New York, Frankfurt, London, Tokyo, or Dubai, where they could switch to a smaller airplane to take them to Nashville, Osaka, or Nairobi. Two new aircraft, the Boeing 787 — the one on the Qantas flight — and Airbus A350, however, have changed the model, and in the coming decades, more passengers will be able to fly nonstop to more places than ever on ultra-long-haul flights.
This is excellent news for many airlines, which can fly to new markets that never would have worked with previous-generation airplanes. In most cases, the larger airplanes had
