Originally Posted by
zerograv
... if you stop somewhere midway to refuel
Otherwise would hazard a guess that it is just not possible, even with Winglets. To many Pax. If you go down to 260 pax ... it might work.
Naturally the main challenge is coming back where you are going against the wind.
The longest sectors I have done were Beijing to Kiev, and Kiev to JFK. 250 seats, no winglets. It was around 9.5 to 10 hours.
As the previous poster mentioned, after 8 or 9 hours you have to start trade payload for fuel.
Some "ball park" numbers:
Aircraft Empty = 90 tons
MTOW = 185 Tons
290 Paxs = 30 Tons (being conservative)
Fuel = 65 Tons
65 Tons of Fuel is good for around 11 hours (being conservative). Bangkok to Paris is likely to be longer than 11 hours ...
in 2004 a holiday company CT2 started up called AV8 airlines to fly direct charters from MANCHESTER and DUBLIN to CAPE TOWN with a 767-300ER in a 2-3-2 config 278 seats
no wing lets fitted to the leased Icelandic 763
MAN-CPT is around 5350nm
the operation went bust within a year
It seems the flight did operate non-stop to CPT from Both MAN and DUB on most occasions and the return flights often dropped in to Palma or LPA for fuel