Norse Atlantic Airways has operated the first ever direct non-stop flight between Norway and Darwin, Australia for a historic charter service which covered 14,730 km with a flight time of nearly 17 hours.
The flight, which was operated by a fuel-efficient Boeing 787-9 Dreamliner, departed Oslo Gardermoen Airport at 6:30 a.m. on August 3 and arrived in Darwin at around 6:00 a.m. on August 4 after flying for 16 and a half hours.
Norse Atlantic’s Dreamliners have a relatively dense seating configuration, with 232 standard Economy seats and 56 Premium Economy seats. If the aircraft had been full to capacity, it wouldn’t have been able to fly such a long distance, but this was a special charter service.
The airline didn’t reveal how many passengers were onboard, although there was a full complement of 12 cabin crew who were operating the flight on behalf of Spanish charter carrier Albastar.
The Boeing 787-9 Dreamliner has a maximum range of 15,400 km, although that is limited by the number of passengers and the amount of cargo onboard. Nonetheless, the aircraft has become a workhorse of ultra-long-haul flying.
Australian flag carrier Qantas uses its Boeing 787-9s to operate a daily non-stop service between Perth in Western Australia and London Heathrow, which covers a great circle distance of 14,500 km – albeit with 102 fewer seats than the Boeing 787 operated by Norse.
Norse started life as a low-cost long-haul airline, which rose from the ashes of Norwegian’s failed long-haul business. The airline still operates flights from Oslo and London Gatwick, as well as Paris, Rome, Berlin and Athens to a number of destinations across the United States, along with Bangkok and Cape Town.
But its charter business is becoming an increasingly part of Norse Atlantic’s attempt to break a profit and charter flights could make up as much as 50% of Norse’s flying by this winter when its leisure-focused scheduled flying suffers a fall in demand.
Last year, Norse Atlantic became the first airline ever to fly a Boeing 787 Dreamliner to Antarctica after flying from Cape Town, South Africa, down to Troll Research Station on the frozen continent, and the airline recently helped a Nigerian airline launch flights to London from Lagos.
What a disgrace. We need solutions to make flying sustainable, not “entrepreneurs” creating and satisfying demand for ridiculous co2 emissions of half empty planes flying halfway around the globe and back. We all have the luxury of good quality education and the world’s knowledge at our fingertips and what do we do with it? Is this all we can come up with?