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American Airlines (AAL) had its longest flight ever this weekend. WFAA (DIS), 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) 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) 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.”