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American Airlines (AAL+1.20%) had its longest flight ever this weekend. WFAA (DIS+1.74%), the local ABC affiliate in Dallas, Texas, reports that the company sent a plane from Dallas, Texas, to Brisbane, Australia on Sunday. Brisbane Airport even hosted a live stream of the event, which was the first time that American had traveled that particular route, coded AA7.
According to the flight-tracking site FlightRadar24, the Boeing (BA+2.76%) 787's journey took 15 hours and 44 minutes to travel more than 13,000 km (8,300 miles). Incredibly, that doesn’t even crack the top 10 longest commercial routes on the FlightRadar24 leaderboard — a 15,000km-plus Singapore Airlines (SINGY+0.76%) jaunt from New York’s John F Kennedy Airport has the longest-haul distinction.
American Airlines did not immediately respond to a request for comment, but on its most recent earnings CEO Robert Isom has highlighted long-haul international flying as a bright spot. At an investing conference in May, he said that the category is especially ripe for selling higher-yielding premium seats because flyers like to be comfortable if they’ll be stuck on a plane for such a long time.
“If you take a look at our long-haul capability, our long-haul fleet capability, we’re growing front cabin by about 30%,” he said. “We’ll be ready to take advantage of that, and my expectations are that we’re going to be able to produce.”