The Longest Flight in the World Takes Almost 19 Hours

If you’ve traveled between the Americas to Europe or Asia, you’re probably familiar with some of the longest nonstop flights available. These commercial flight routes across the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans can easily take over 10 hours to complete, but what is the longest flight in the world?

To understand how flight paths are measured in distance, it helps to know the geometric concept known as great circle distance. Essentially, a great circle distance is the shortest distance between two points along the circumference of a sphere, such as Earth.

All flight of the routes quoted in this article are based on the estimated great circle distance between two airports. However, real-world commercial aircraft usually have to deviate from the optimal path in order to avoid severe weather, other planes or the borders of territories with closed airspace. In all likelihood, the actual distance will be a bit longer than the quoted distance on paper.

Here, we’ve ranked the longest flights by time, rather than by distance. After all, when you’re crammed into an economy seat and wondering how the lucky ducks up in business class are faring, you’re typically thinking about how many hours you left left on the plane, not how many miles lie between you and your destination.