"Beat Singapore Airlines. But the 'world's longest new nonstop flight' is just a Chinese hoax. Here's the truth

It has been the catchphrase of the last few days: there is a new longest non-stop flight in the world, beating Singapore Airlines' flight to New York.

The new record link would be the between New York and the undiscovered city of Fuzhou on China's south-central coast, operated by Xiamen Airlines. Flight time: 19 hours and 20 minutes, compared with 19 hours and 10 minutes at Singapore JFK.

Now, aside from the fact that it is wrong to make flight length rankings based not on miles flown but on flight times, it is clear that the 'wow' factor is time. Thus, Dozens of sites and social profiles published the 'news' supinely, without going to verify its foundation.

The New York-Fuzhou is a twice-weekly flight operating from 2024 and operated by a Boeing 787-9. And already the thing should have 'stunk', Because a 787-9 in a 'normal' passenger configuration (the one in Xiamen has 30 seats in Business and 257 in Economy) and that it does not fly practically empty, 19 hours and 20 minutes in the air does not 'pull' them even in his wildest dreams.

And in fact, on the company's website, the flight duration (for example, that of next October 17) is listed as 16 hours and 25 minutes.

With the trajectory followed being longer than it could because the company, in its flights between the United States and China, does not fly over Russian airspace.

However, if, again on the Xiamen website, one goes to book the flight from October 24 onward, one finds that indeed the MF 850 flight is always given non-stop, but with a block time of 19 hours and 20 minutes. Which is puzzling: is it possible that winter winds are so strong over the Pacific Ocean that they make the flight so long (three hours longer!)? No.

Then, a hypothesis surfaced the other day by the One Mile at a Time website, it is possible that those 'smart guys' in Xiamen, as the flight is often delayed by more than an hour and may actually encounter 'challenging' weather conditions, Have seen fit to 'slobber' with the flight time.

But how is this possible? We are not talking about a bus between two small towns in Transylvania, but a flight operated by a carrier that is part of the Skyteam alliance.

The same omaat.com speculated that although the flight was listed on the company's website as 'nonstop,' in fact a technical stopover was planned with Winter. Hypothesis that in recent hours has been confirmed by aeroroutes.com, a site ultra-specialized in new routes or route changes, which has 'discovered' that from October 27, the New York-Fuzhou will have a 90-minute stopover in Tokyo, although the company still does not indicate this on its website. It will be a 'distraction' or a 'patsy' with which to get a lot of (free) publicity around the world?