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Old 25th Apr 2012, 10:54
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Cyrano
 
Join Date: Nov 1999
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Originally Posted by Tableview
There is also passenger resistance to ultra-long non-stop flights. There is a trade-off between a shorter overall journey time and having a stop to stretch legs, buy overpriced duty frees, and so on.
I would add: there is also a fuel penalty associated with the non-stop flight, in that you're having to burn fuel to carry 20+ hours of fuel (plus the structural weight for tanks that size). I don't know whether that's outweighed by the fuel a lighter aircraft would burn in descent/landing/takeoff/climb from an intermediate airport.

I'd agree with The SSK that crew duty rules would also add huge costs to this. Two full flight deck crews and a dedicated crew rest area, perhaps? I'm far from convinced that any attainable yield premium (if indeed there is any) would overcome the operating cost disadvantage, especially as the existing big players on the kangaroo route (EK/EY/SQ etc) could rapidly and easily launch a price war to drive any new high-yield entrant away.

Just because a route might theoretically become technically feasible doesn't mean it's commercially sound (as the runaway commercial success of the A340-500 and B777-200LR has shown).
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