It was a case of the late lunch on a long flight as the human guinea pigs on the experimental Qantas non-stop New York-Sydney flight stuck into their midday meal shortly after their night-time departure.
The switch was part of a series of experiments conducted on board Flight QF7879 to try and assess the impact of ultra-long-haul flights on passengers and ways of reducing jetlag.
Tests on the 49 passengers and crew ranged from monitoring pilot brain waves, melatonin levels and alertness to exercise classes for passengers.
The experimental flights come as Qantas is poised to make a decision on whether to proceed with Project Sunrise, which would see it fly non-stop from eastern Australia to New York and London.
READ: Is project sunrise fading into the sunset?
“Night flights usually start with dinner and then lights off,” Qantas chief executive Alan Joyce said.
“For this flight, we started with lunch and kept the lights on for the first six hours, to match the time of day at our destination. It means you start reducing the jetlag straight away.”
The historic flight landed safely in Sydney 19 hours and 16 minutes after leaving New York.
That was a few minutes ahead of the airline’s regular New-York-Sydney one-stop service which had taken off three hours ahead of QF7879.
.@Kochie_Online takes us on board @Qantas' non-stop research flight from New York to Sydney ✈️ pic.twitter.com/3b8vsX6Y70
— Sunrise (@sunriseon7) October 20, 2019
Qantas Captain Sean Golding, who led the four pilots operating the service, said the flight went smoothly.
“Headwinds picked up overnight, which slowed us down to start with, but that was part of our scenario planning,” he said.
“Given how long we were airborne, we were able to keep optimizing the flight path to make the best of the conditions.
“We had a lot of interest from air traffic controllers as we crossed through different airspace because of the uniqueness of this flight. We also had a special sign off and welcome home from the control towers in New York and Sydney, which you don’t get every day.
“Overall, we’re really happy with how the flight went and it’s great to have some of the data we need to help assess turning this into a regular service.”
Qantas plans two more flights as part of the Project Sunrise evaluations: London to Sydney in November and a second New York-Sydney flight in December.
