I see a big “testosterone attitude” on this issue, SYD-LHR no stop, with a sure mention on the Guinness Book of records.
Industry asks and Regulators follow, as it happened with the “new” (already old) FTL, when EASA asked scientists to reasearch into human on duties/flight times performnce: “scientist” gave the green flag, so the new rules were adopted... the problem here is that, thanks to the technology, we can get “updated” machines which can fly that route, but what about the”human factor”: has been “updated” it too?...I’m not sure. I retired eight years ago as a B744 captain and I remember quite well my “physical feelings” when flying from South-east Asia into LHR...”just” 13 Hours (14 in wintertime)...inbound to Lambourne, the ATC comes in: “flight xyz, leave LAM in heading 270”...then after a while: “flight xxx, descent to 6000ft, QNH 1005, turn left heading 180, reduce speed to 210 kts, change 118.5” (or something like that)... I remember the high stress not to confuse the Numbers, that is not to put the speed number into the heading window and viceversa, And this was just when ATC announced: “No delay expected”, which in LHR means:expect 20 minutes delay.
Now, I wonder what could be the “pilot performance” after 20 hours flight times, (maybe woken-up 25-26 hours earlier), maybe with 30-40 minutes delay, a CAT III approach and a go-around...how many “bites “ will have left in the pilots brain to accomodate a potential abnormal situation? For the flight safety sake, pilots unions should speak up soon.