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Travel restrictions lead to world’s longest flight

written by Sandy Milne | March 18, 2020

On 14 March, travel restrictions imposed by the US led to an Air Tahiti Nui 787-9 Dreamliner making the history books.

Flight TN064 took off from Papeete, French Polynesia, at 2:45am (local time), flying a distance of 15,715 kilometres direct to Paris-Charles de Gaulle, France. The previous longest route, which runs from Singapore to Newark (New Jersey), is 15,434 kilometres in length.

The Dreamliner made the journey in a total of 16 hours and 30 minutes.

The route usually involves a stopover at Los Angeles International, at which point passengers must alight the aircraft and proceed through border control checkpoints before being allowed to continue.

Source: Great Circle Mapper

Tahiti is the largest island of French Polynesia, which is administered as an integral part of the French Republic. With the US temporarily banning flights and/or incoming passengers from France, the flight was prevented from stopping over in LAX.

Air Tahiti Nui made it clear that this was a temporary measure, intended to circumvent the problem until alternative layovers are arranged. These are reported to be Guadeloupe, as well as unspecified Canadian airports. 

https://twitter.com/AeroDork/status/1239977727568076803

As many commentators online have noted, the PPT-CDG is technically a domestic flight. This would make it nearly double the previous domestic record – the 8,200-kilometre direct route from Boston to Honolulu, operated by Hawaiian Airlines.

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