Emirates is set to wrest the title of world’s longest airline route from Australia’s Qantas Airways Ltd. with a service between its Dubai hub and Panama City.

The flight will traverse 13,821 kilometers (8,590 miles), according to the Great Circle Mapper website, outstripping Qantas’s Sydney-Dallas route by 17km. Emirates will use a Boeing Co. 777-200LR — the longest-range jetliner — on the service, which will take 17 hours and 35 minutes, it said Thursday.

The longest-ever non-stop sector, operated by Singapore Airlines Ltd. to Newark, New Jersey, spanned 15,344km and took about 19 hours. The daily all-business-class service was halted in 2013 along with a 14,113km Los Angeles route, with analysts suggesting the flights weren’t viable with the aging four-engine Airbus Group SE A340 jets that the Asian carrier deployed.

For Emirates, Panama will serve as a gateway for onward business and tourist travel to cities across Central America, the Caribbean and northern South America, as well as providing capacity for imported electronics, machined products and drugs, Chairman Sheikh Ahmed bin Saeed Al Maktoum said in the release.

In a time of lagging performance in many areas of the air cargo sector, Atlas Air is one carrier that appears to be enjoying the fruits of its labor this year. The company announced adjusted net income of US$29.4 million, or $1.17 per diluted share, for the second quarter of 2015. After taking into account several one-time charges from Q2s in 2014 and 2015, Atlas’ adjusted Q2 net income rose by more than 85 percent, year over year.

The air charter and aircraft leasing operation said its free cash flow for Q2 was $68.5 million,  compared to $59.2 million in Q2 2014. “Earnings in the second quarter were driven by contribution and margin strength in ACMI charter and dry leasing,” said William J. Flynn, president and CEO of Atlas Air.

Flynn also said he anticipates 55 percent of earnings to occur in the second half of the year and that he expects a relatively strong peak season. Some of the larger freight forwarders, he added, are already starting to reserve space in preparation for peak demand.

More than 1,000 security officers, baggage handlers and wheelchair attendants at New York’s LaGuardia and John F. Kennedy International Airports voted unanimously to authorize a strike starting on the evening of 7/22/15.  The contract workers will walk off the job at JFK’s Terminal 7, home to British Airways, United Airlines, Cathay Pacific Airways, at 10 p.m. The strike will continue through 7/23 at JFK and LaGuardia.