09 FEB 2017: One of my favorite wines comes from a California winery by the name of Frog’s Leap. On their bottles they have some very clever little fun lines like “Open Other End” on the bottom of the label and RIBBIT written down two sides of the cork. The best part however is a string of seemingly meaningless letters above the barcode – TFWYHF. Meaningless that is, until someone explained to me it stands for, “Time’s Fun When You’re Having Flies.”

A tad ironically perhaps, time’s seldom fun and usually does anything but fly when you are flying, especially for those who suffer from ‘aviophobia’, aka fear of flying, which is one of the most prevalent human paranoias.

That said, it’s always a little discombobulated when airlines proudly boast about how excruciatingly long some of their flights are. This week it was Qatar Airways’ turn to crow about having the world’s longest non-stop commercial flight sector: It goes from Auckland, New Zealand to Doha in the UAE covering 14,535 km (9,032 miles) in a mere 17 hours 30 minutes.

If you ever get annoyed when a flight lands before you have finished watching your movie, you will have no such problems here. On this trip you’ll have time to watch two complete seasons of Downton Abbey or back-to-back (full-game including commercials) coverage of an entire seven-game Stanley Cup series – all while stuck in a metal tube hurtling blindly through space at 35,000 feet. What joy!

According to the airline’s press releases, Qatar flight QR920, a 259 seat Boeing 777-200LR, soared over 10 time zones captained by four “rotating” pilots (makes you think of those internally-lit Santa Clauses no?) while the 15 cabin crew served “1,100 cups of tea and coffee, 2,000 cold drinks and 1,036 meals.” Whether or not that “cold drink” count includes ‘adult beverages’ we shall never know but one can only assume that on a flight of this duration and all those time zones there will be a few people inadvertently adding ‘daycaps’ to their nightcaps.

What’s also intriguing about Qatar Airways’ boast of now holding the title for the world’s longest flight by time and distance is that this seems to be some kind of badge of honor with Emirates, one of their two major UAE competitors. The new Qatar record nudges out Emirates, the previous champion, whose route between Auckland and Dubai is infinitesimally shorter both in length at 8,819 miles and time at 17 hours, 20 minutes: Frankly that last one should be declared a tie.

Aviation purists have already cried foul at the Qatar claim, pointing out that Air India operates a longer, 9,389-mile, flight from Delhi to San Francisco. It may soon become moot however as Singapore Airlines is allegedly giving serious consideration to resurrecting its 19-hour, non-stop Singapore to New York route some time next year. What fun.

But let’s get real here. As tempting as watching an entire Stanley Cup seven-game series might be, 17 plus hours on any airplane is a toil of a pleasure. Qatar is known for its great premium service, their Business cabin on this route has 42, 78-inch pitch lie-flat seats in a 2x2x2 configuration. Not too shabby. But for the less fortunate 217 passengers that turn right rather than left when they get on board, things aren’t quite as cushy. In the back, while the seat pitch of 33 inches is good, 23 rows of 3x3x3 seating means there are 69 middle seats which, for almost 18 hours, is most people’s idea of purgatory… even without that annoying seatback kicking kid adding to the fun.

As a point of reference, the longest ever non-stop flight was recorded in 1986 when the twin-prop, Rutan Model 76 Voyager circled the globe in nine days, three minutes and 44 seconds, a distance of 42,432 km. The two pilots Dick Rutan and Jeana Yeager had just 106 pounds of fuel left when they landed – about 1.5% of what they had at takeoff. With just two seats, neither of them had to sit in the middle and 55,000 spectators were on hand to welcome them home at Edwards Air Force Base.

TFWYFP – Time’s Fun When You Fly Privately.