Rarefied Air for Flight 19

Luke Chittock, a travel agent from Perth, Australia, is a hard-core aviation buff. He’s flown on the supersonic Concorde, taken a “joy flight” over Antarctica and hopped around the world in nearly 900 airplanes as part of his perpetual quest for what he calls “product awareness.”

The veteran traveler says his biggest thrill was being a passenger on Singapore Airlines Flight 19 when it landed at Changi Airport here Thursday, 18 hours and 15 minutes after leaving Los Angeles. The flight, covering 9,298 miles, shattered the world record for the longest nonstop commercial air service by more than two hours.

“This is the record-breaking flight,” Chittock said, as the airplane touched down and the cabin erupted in applause.

Touted as a new level of service for business travelers, the first L.A.-Singapore nonstop flight attracted many passengers who bought tickets just for the bragging rights.

Sanford Fung, a family practice doctor from Dallas, left behind his wife, who is five months pregnant, just so he could say he flew on the world’s longest flight. “I would rather do this than save up to buy a BMW,” he said.

Fung and Chittock each paid $1,100 for round-trip tickets in what Singapore Airlines calls executive economy class.

Flight 19 not only pushed the limit of passenger endurance, it also was the latest step by airlines and aircraft manufacturers to lure more customers by extending the boundaries of commercial flight.

Singapore Airlines’ Airbus A340-500, also known as the A345, left Los Angeles International Airport at 8:20 p.m. Tuesday, crossed 10 time zones and passed the international date line before arriving in Singapore at 6:35 a.m. local time Thursday. The flight, with 151 passengers, went nearly halfway around the globe.

The service is being marketed to business travelers who want to cut hours off their travel time. Before the A340-500 was introduced, an L.A.-Singapore flight took 20 to 21 hours, including a refueling stop.

Continental Airlines’ nonstop from Newark, N.J., to Hong Kong had been the longest regularly scheduled flight -- 8,060 miles in 16 hours using a Boeing 777-200.

Most of the longest nonstop commercial flights before Flight 19 lasted 15 to 16 hours, mainly on routes from the U.S. to Asia.

But more record flights are coming. In the fall, Singapore Airlines plans nonstop service from New York to Singapore that could match or beat the current endurance record as it flies over the North Pole. (Chittock plans to be on that flight too.)

Airbus rival Boeing Co. is developing the 777-200LR, which the company says will have a nonstop range of 10,500 miles nonstop, or about 20 hours, when it enters service in 2006. Aircraft designers have been able to accommodate ever longer flights by using composite materials that help reduce weight and by developing jet engines that are more powerful yet use less fuel.

With airliners flying 20 hours, it soon will be possible to fly nonstop between almost any two points on the globe. “We’re getting to about the end of the road in terms of distance. That’s about as far as you can go to reach any destination in the world,” said Klaus Brauer, Boeing’s project director for passenger revenue development.

To be able to fly nonstop from LAX to Singapore, the Airbus 340-500 was redesigned to hold about 10% more fuel, or an extra 5,100 gallons, for a total of 56,750 gallons for its four engines. And the number of seats was reduced from 313 to 181 to save weight.

During the flight, chief pilot Siew Leong walked the aisles and assured some passengers that if pushed, the aircraft could fly for 21 hours, plenty of leeway to make a detour in the event of an emergency.

To make the flight both mentally and physically more tolerable, Singapore Airlines altered the passenger cabin. Instead of three classes, the airline offers two: the more expensive “Raffles” class, with seats that can recline almost flat like a bed (typical round-trip fare: $5,000), and “executive economy,” with seats that have about 5 inches more legroom and are 2 inches wider than typical coach seats. The aisles are also a bit wider.

Still, for all of the extra space, 18 hours is still a long time. To help make the time pass, plentiful food and entertainment were essential.

Flight 19 served three full meals in Raffles class and two in economy, with real silverware. Complimentary beverages, including champagne and other wine, flowed freely. The menu was 12 pages long. And the airline doubled the number of meals loaded onto the plane -- to about 1,000 -- in case everybody wanted chicken instead of pork or fish. Two bottles of water were packed for every passenger.

On any long flight there are some concerns about health risks. In recent years there have been a few cases of airline passengers who died from blood clots, apparently caused by sitting immobile in cramped seats.

Russell B. Rayman, executive director of the Aerospace Medical Assn. in Virginia, said the health issues are not related to the long-distance flights per se, but from sitting too long. “You can be immobile in your office, in the train, in your car,” he said. The key on long flights, he said, is to get up and walk around.

So on the LAX-Singapore flight, one popular spot was a small buffet set up in a lounge area in both sections of the aircraft. During the flight, passengers mingled there while snacking on chips and fruit, as part of the airline’s plan to entice travelers to get out of their seats.

Glenn Short, a retired pediatric dentist from Providence, R.I., made several visits to the lounge. The buffet “made all the difference,” he said. He liked being able to stand up and “talk to people to get things off my mind.”

Indeed, as the hours droned on, many passengers said they didn’t find the flight to be all that grueling.

They spent their time watching movies on 9-inch screens at each seat. Passengers were presented with a couch potato’s dream: 29 movies, 33 Nintendo video games, 78 TV shows, plus 102 audio compact discs. Films included recent releases such as “The Matrix Revolutions” and “Master and Commander,” plus Japanese and Indian films. CDs included Britney Spears, the Osmonds and Beethoven piano concertos.

Keith Inouye of Gardena, a graphic designer for a horse racing TV network in Los Angeles, took Flight 19 on a whim to experience what an 18-hour flight felt like. He and a friend purchased an inaugural flight package deal that included round-trip airfare and three nights in a Singapore hotel for $1,380.

Inouye passed the time by watching two movies, two TV sitcoms and listening to two compact discs before taking a four-hour nap. “I don’t want to watch too many movies because I want to save them for the trip back,” he said.

Some analysts wonder whether passengers will pay a 10% premium over regular economy seats just to save a few hours that would have been spent with a stopover. But Singapore Airlines says the flight can be profitable because it has double the number of higher-priced “Raffles”-class seats than on its other flights.

Another Flight 19 passenger was Suraphol Sresthaphumlarp, a sales and marketing executive for Fluor Corp. He travels to Asia half a dozen times a year from the company’s Houston offices.

He said the nonstop flight would allow him to have eight hours of uninterrupted sleep so his body could adjust better to the time change. And on Flight 19, sleep was aided to an extent by flying in darkness the whole way. “Stopping over somewhere messes up my schedule,” Sresthaphumlarp said.

So for the first four hours of the flight Sresthaphumlarp read, did some work and ate. Then he slept before waking up a few hours to eat another meal and watch a movie before the plane landed. “Before you know it I’m there,” he said. “Eighteen hours sounds like a lot but it really isn’t, particularly if you travel to Asia a lot.”

The long flight provided some unusual work schedules for the crews. On long international flights, it’s common to have two sets of pilots aboard who each take one turn at the controls. The two cockpit crews on Flight 19 each took the controls twice, with rest periods lasting about five hours.

Under the airline’s operating procedure, flight attendants are required to stroll down the aisle frequently, which to some observers appeared to be about every five minutes, or more than 200 times during the flight.

All 14 flight attendants worked the aisles during the first and last four hours of the flight. During the middle 10 hours, only seven would be on duty at any one time while the others rested. Off-duty crew members went down steps in the rear of the plane to sleep in small bunk beds on a lower deck.

For some passengers, the flight had at least one other distinction. Even after countless visits, the bathrooms stayed amazingly spotless. They had ambience too: Raffles section bathrooms have windows, although this design feature was lost on some passengers during a flight that flew through darkness the entire way.

As the flight neared its destination, Inouye called his mother on the aircraft’s satellite phone. “She couldn’t believe we were still in the air,” he said.

After the plane landed, Inouye said of the voyage, “It’s a lot better than I expected. I’m very well rested and ready to go.”

As the sun came up in Singapore, Inouye and his flying buddy, Johann Shearer, collected their bags and quickly headed out to the horse races.

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX) * Benchmarks in passenger airline travel * Singapore Airlines’ record nonstop flight this week of 18 hours and 15 minutes from Los Angeles to Singapore was the latest in a century of celebrated passenger flights. *

1908: C.W. Furnas, a friend of the Wright brothers, flies 800 feet seated as a passenger next to Wilbur Wright on the Wright Flyer III at Kitty Hawk, N.C. 1914: St. Petersburg-Tampa Air Boat Line starts scheduled passenger airline service between the two Florida cities. One-way fare for the 18-mile, 23-minute flight: $5 for a gross weight of 200 pounds, including baggage. 1927: Pan American Airways inaugurates international service with a 90-mile flight between Key West, Fla., and Havana, with eight passengers. 1939: Pan Am begins its transatlantic service when it flies 22 passengers, on a Boeing 314 Yankee Clipper flying boat, from Port Washington, N.Y., to Marseilles, France, with a stopover in the Azores. One-way fare: $375 (or roughly $5,000 in today’s dollars). 1940: Trans World Airlines Boeing 307 Stratoliners are able to fly at high altitudes because the cabins are pressurized. 1952: British Overseas Airways Corp. begins the longest commercial jet service -- from London to Johannesburg, South Africa. The 7,705-mile trip, with five stopovers, takes 23.5 hours. 1953: TWA starts nonstop transcontinental service from Los Angeles to New York. Flight time: 8 hours, 17 minutes. 1959: Pan Am begins nonstop transatlantic service from New York to London using Boeing 707s. 1976: The Concorde supersonic jet begins flying between London and New York, a trip that takes 3 hours. 1976: Pan Am, with a specially modified Boeing 747, launches around-the-world service. Departing from New York, it stops in New Delhi and Tokyo before returning to New York 46 hours later. 2001: Continental Airlines begins 16-hour, 8,060-mile nonstop service between Newark, N.J., and Hong Kong. 2004: Singapore Airlines launches nonstop service from Los Angeles to Singapore, a 9,298-mile trip that takes 18 hours and 15 minutes. * Source: Los Angeles Times