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.