A hardy group of 181 passengers boarded a jet at Singapore airport yesterday for the world's longest commercial flight - an inaugural non-stop service to New York designed to appeal to time-pressed Asian and American business executives.
After a champagne send-off accompanied by a band blasting out "New York, New York", the Singapore Airlines plane embarked on an 18-hour, 8,900 nautical mile journey over the North Pole which has drawn criticism from experts on medical and commercial grounds.
Airline staff handed out 20,000 red apples to mark the record, which uses a new ultra long-range Airbus A340-500 plane with enlarged wings, enhanced engines and a smaller, lighter body than traditional passenger aircraft.
Singapore Airlines said it would knock four hours off a one-stop service and would cut down on delays. A spokesman, John Cotton, said: "If you've got an intermediate stop-off point you're at the mercy of air traffic control and various other factors, which can be very inconvenient."
The new Airbus plane has a long enough range to fly non-stop between London and western Australia. But doctors have expressed concern about the impact on the body of such long unbroken flights, in which passengers will constantly breathe recycled air.
This really has to be rated as the ultimate buttock endurance test!
. I suppose you could lie in your seat and do isometrics 
. I wonder if the air recycling differs from that in ordinary long flights 
. Theoretically it could be done indefinitely as on a spacecraft of course. How long are the longest routine flights prior to this bottom-buster?
