Qatar Airways recently launched the world's longest commercial flight, from Doha, Qatar to Auckland, New Zealand. The flight took 17 hours and 30 minutes and covered a distance of 14,535 kilometers. The maiden flight arrived on Waitangi Day in New Zealand.
The new daily flight to Auckland was serviced by a Boeing 777 which has a two-class configuration, with 217 seats in Economy Class and 42 seats in Business Class, reports Breaking Travel News. There were four pilots and 15 cabin crew, who served 1,100 hot drinks, 2,000 cold drinks and 1,036 meals.
Passengers can experience one of the most comfortable fully-flat beds in the sky with 78 inches of seat pitch. Passengers would also have time to watch all three films in the Lord of the Rings trilogy (9 hours 18 minutes of viewing), which was shot in New Zealand.
Doha-Auckland-Doha daily services will offer 116 tons of belly-hold capacity every week to support the growing imports of raw, consumer and industrial materials into New Zealand.
The arrival of the flight was in Auckland was welcomed by New Zealand's Minister of trade and state owned enterprise Todd McClay and Auckland Airport chief executive Adrian Littlewood. The launching event is considered a important in the relationship of New Zealand-Qatar: it means the opening up greater people to people and business to business connections between the two countries.
A new market for exporters specifically in beverage and fresh food will be made available for New Zealand exporters to fully realise the potential of the direct service's freight capacity.
Qatar Airways group chief executive, Akbar Al Baker said: "The launch of our new service to Auckland is an important milestone for Qatar Airways as we expand both in the region and globally across our network providing more options and better connections to exciting business and leisure destinations in Europe and the Middle East."
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