In a bid to avoid Russian airspace, Cathay Pacific’s New York-Hong Kong service will become the world’s longest flight. The 16,618km route overflies the Atlantic Ocean, the UK, southern Europe and central Asia, making it the longest commercial flight measured by distance.

The new flight path will take around 17 hours beating the current longest flight – Singapore Airlines’ Singapore-New York route (15,349km) – by 1,269km.

Flying an Airbus A350-1000, the Cathay flight would usually traverse Arctic and Russian airspace, but Cathay, like many international airlines, is avoiding overflying Russia due to the country’s invasion of Ukraine.

“We are always running contingency routings for potential events or scenarios,” an airline spokesperson told Bloomberg of the potential new flight path.

“The Transatlantic option relies on the facilitation of strong seasonal tailwinds at this time of the year in order for the flight time to be between 16 and 17 hours, thereby making it more favourable than the Transpacific route.”

Cathay is currently seeking permission to overfly the airspaces of the nations involved in order to operate the new route from JFK airport to Hong Kong.

The route originally involved a stopover in Los Angeles, but the new version would fly between the destinations nonstop.

It follows Air New Zealand’s announcement that it will launch one of the world’s longest flights in September 2022: a direct route from Auckland to New York City.

Covering 14,200km, it will become the fourth longest commercial flight in existence.