Longest RW flight ; non-stop ? 1035 nm DCT
Well - seems like this thread's official question is being answered in variety of ways. For me, its nice to take long cross-country with lots of scenery and lots of fuel stops. Let's face it, helicopters are not exactly known for their fuel efficiency ! But when it comes to being a fuel hog, not many aircraft (1) exceed the H-53E series. With 3 T64GE-416 engines slurping about 5000 pph in normal "economic" cruise, it should be easy to feel guilty for not using a Prius . . . but instead its orgasmic ! Anyway - getting back to the question - and answer; it was a normal flight for us to fly 53Es non-stop from the NATO/Naval Air Base in Singonella Sicily to Tel Aviv non-stop and I just used an iPad app to calculate the great circle distance which showed it as 1,035 nm. We used to go to Rota (Cadiz), Spain also on the Atlantic side direct from "Sig" but that is shown to be a bit less at 1.018 nm. Usually 2 air-refueling plugs with a C-130 would do it. I'm pretty sure that others have flown further but this was a typical milk-run route that we ran regularly. Would be curious to hear what others have done elsewhere. I would guess that the USAF's older twin-engined versioned 53J or the ANG's H-60H's would probably fly longer or further missions for their rescue or satellite retrieval flights. But one of the early transatlantic flights with HH-3s and/or 53s in the 60's and 70's probably win hands down...Would love to hear !