Longest flight on server.

[John McMurdo]

I am curious as to what the longest flight people have been on online,  Although I know one is able to take the occasional break, I can't see me flying long haul, a medium haul flight maybe.  I am new to the site, so the longest flight I have done is Gatwick to Munich (although I did have to divert to Frankfurt which added a little extra)  I do like the idea of flying international,  and I would love to emulate flights (as best I can) that I have been on myself,  the longest being Heathrow to Singapore,  which if my memory serves was around 10 hours, for now I think I will stick to Europe though.

Edited September 22, 2021 at 11:50 AM by John McMurdo

[Alistair Thomson]

Flying long haul has never interested me. It's like watching paint dry. If you want to "fly international" you can get the flavour of a country's scenery and ATC etc by flying entirely within that country on a local flight, and that would keep you busy enough!

Emulating long hauls which you did in RW was as boring for the pilots as it undoubtedly was for you and your fellow passengers. At least, the passengers get a chance to sleep, if they can.

[John McMurdo]

1 minute ago, Alistair Thomson said:

Flying long haul has never interested me. It's like watching paint dry. If you want to "fly international" you can get the flavour of a country's scenery and ATC etc by flying entirely within that country on a local flight, and that would keep you busy enough!

Emulating long hauls which you did in RW was as boring for the pilots as it undoubtedly was for you and your fellow passengers. At least, the passengers get a chance to sleep, if they can.

I thought flying long haul might get a bit boring,  I guess it could get interesting depending on how much interaction with ATC one had.

[Tobias Dammers]

Longhaul is fun in events like Cross The Pond, because it's an absolute carnage on all fronts, and because there's a fun vibe to it across all sorts of other communication channels (idk, over here, on discord, etc.).

Outside of that, and especially without ATC coverage, I don't really see the point.

[Spender Vondel]

It's personal, as with many things in life 🙂

So personally... 😉 ....long haul does attract me because I want(ed) to fly the Airbus A350 wide body airliner as it should. So I crossed the pond from EBBR to KBOS for about 7 hours with NAT control online. I kind of liked it. Upon landing it really felt as an accomplishment.

However, I won't be repeating it very often since it does get boring. And 7 hours of my free time is kind of expensive when you think about all the other things one could do. Looking into real-world use of the A350 I found that some airlines actually use it for short haul flights as well, so that's what I do now. 😊

 

[Dace Nicmane]

On 9/24/2021 at 9:51 PM, Spender Vondel said:

Looking into real-world use of the A350 I found that some airlines actually use it for short haul flights as well, so that's what I do now.

Can you share which airlines use it for short routes? I'm kinda in a similar situation.

[John McMurdo]

38 minutes ago, Dace Nicmane said:

Can you share which airlines use it for short routes? I'm kinda in a similar situation.

Same,  I have grown very fond of the A350, but at the moment am just flying short haul flights,  the longest flight I have made was King Shaka to Cape Town, around 2 hours,  that was offline though,  and up until discovering VATSIM I have not really worried about which airlines fly to or from where using which aircraft.

[Spender Vondel]

13 hours ago, Dace Nicmane said:

Can you share which airlines use it for short routes? I'm kinda in a similar situation.

I've only searched for one airline: Lufthansa

DLH122: Frankfurt - Munich: https://www.flightradar24.com/data/flights/lh122 
DLH117: Munich - Frankfurt:  https://www.flightradar24.com/data/flights/lh117

I find it strange that they would use this wide body for such a short flight, but there it is, they do. I guess they need to transfer the A350's from one to the other airport from time to time (maintenance @Frankfurt?)

Now the secret is out and I won't be able to use the callsigns anymore 😕😄

Edited September 26, 2021 at 11:43 AM by Spender Vondel

[Dace Nicmane]

Thanks for sharing.

This route is kinda too short though 😂

[Robert Shearman Jr]

I just deleted a longer rant about long-haul pilots on VATSIM because I don't want to rant.  So I'll just say this -- long-haul flights on VATSIM are fine as long as you plan to be at your PC, actively managing the flight.  If you're not, please disconnect from the network during the part that you aren't -- as the Code of Conduct requires.  Thank you and good day 🙂

[Dace Nicmane]

Some of the longest real world flights are Europe to Australia. People have done them on VATSIM before and do them still.

Personally I haven't flown anything insanely long, but I do some 8-12 hour Asia - Europe/USA runs regularly.

Why long haul?

I get bored from flying short haul destinations over and over again.

I love heavy aircraft and those tend to have longer routes.

I think it also adds some flavor for the controllers, to work an exotic callsign, especially if they know it's a real-world flight, come from afar. And makes them think about separation. 😜

Edited September 26, 2021 at 05:16 PM by Dace Nicmane

[Dace Nicmane]

5 hours ago, Spender Vondel said:

DLH122: Frankfurt - Munich: https://www.flightradar24.com/data/flights/lh122 
DLH117: Munich - Frankfurt:  https://www.flightradar24.com/data/flights/lh117

BTW, for reasons unknown to me, Ethiopian flies a B787 between ESSA and ENGM.

https://flightaware.com/live/findflight?origin=ESSA&destination=engm

And since Ethiopian has A350s, too, I'll replace the 787 on the route without remorse. 😜

[Miguel Albano]

Flying long haul on a computer is, naturally, a whole different experience by itself. I've done my share of long and ultra long haul (17 hours was the longest, I believe) in a myriad of aircraft and continents.

I would add a couple of notes. If I'm not in front of my computer, I'll disconnect. There's no reason to leave the VATSIM connection open when you're going out of the house and won't be able to respond to controllers or other traffic.

Now, my biggest advantage to flying long haul is that I work from home. So, it's actually quite entertaining to wake up, get a flight going, work through the day and land the bird in a different continent at the end of the day. It actually helps me to "end the day". I might get no ATC for that specific flight, but it's still entertaining.

Flight Sims can offer different experiences to different individuals and that's the best part about them. Some might be doing GA, short haul, long haul, whatever... lots going on.

[Brad Littlejohn]

A lot of us have to caveat this because of the CoC and disconnecting if we aren't going to stay in front of the controls or be able to respond if we are called or PMed or anything.

With that said, thanks to a couple of friends who always did their weekly KLAX-EGLL run, I'd start up an hour later at KLAS and join them en route, as their route passed right over my departing airport. Whether with them or on my own, I'd start the flight at around midnight or 1am, get to cruise altitude, disconnect, and go to bed just as I'm hitting, say, east of Salt Lake City. Nine hours later, I'm more than halfway between Keflavik and Dublin. I'd reconnect just in time for the evening rush in the UK, when they are packed. Enjoy the traffic, meet/greet pilots and controllers over there, the accents, etc., and point out the drastic differences between controlling over there and the US. Land, thank the ATC, and enjoy the rest of my day.

Wash/rinse/repeat if I flew to EGKK, ESSA, LFPL, EHAM, YSSY, etc.

From there, I've done similar distance runs: RJBB-KLAS, YMML-KPDX, etc. The farthest I've done is pole to pole, where I start and land at the airports closest to the North and South pole. I'd start at SAWH (Ushuaia-Malvinas, on Tierra del Fuego), and end at CYLT (Alert, Canada). Just unusual places no-one thinks about flying to or barely has known about.

Other than that, I also keep to shorter, regional routes, using either an E170 or will with an A220 (when a good model is released). But occasionally I'll pull out an A333, B773, or A388 for something long.

BL.