Will Xiamen Air Operate The World's Longest Flight, At 19hr20min?

These ultra long haul flights are overrated.Often times I prefer to fly 10 hours and connect to stretch my legs, take a shower and have a snack.

I don't think they are adding a refueling stop ... Chinese airlines sometimes schedule pad to an insane degree. Didn't you recently write an article about China Eastern's insanely padded flight from Shanghai to Cairo?

19 hours on a plane....
I'll be right back... checking to see if the temperature in hell is freezing .

Out of curiosity, will flight times actually eventually start getting shorter at some point?

Newer generation aircraft are cruising faster by a little bit. I wonder if someone with more knowledge than me knows if there's been a meaningful difference in how fast aircraft are to the older generations from the 20th century. And I know the supersonic jets were/might become a thing.

Or is there too much tradeoff for speed regarding other factors?

Where would they refuel, Fairbanks?

Flight times will get shorter if you pay extra. Delta is actually developing a special time dilation field for those in the main cabin to ensure that if they don't get to their destination an hour after those in premium cabins, it will at least feel like it.

My money is on a refueling stop in Anchorage. There’s a lot of cargo that can be swapped with UPS and FedEx with their hub up there, in addition to refueling. Given Xiamen is a big technology manufacturing hub for Apple and others, there will no doubt be a lot of cargo moving back and forth

MF850 has different schedules for NS and NW seasons:

NS: JFK-FOC
NW: JFK-HGH-FOC

The extra 3 hours in that 19 hours are at HGH

Or more likely it is just mis-filed and will be corrected at some point.

Suggestions of cargo interlining in ANC are not realistic as most cargo goes the other way, not TO China!

Mainland Chinese airline reviews are extremely hard to find since 2022, and for good reason. Gone are the days when airlines like Hainan and Xiamen were commended for their product. Instead, Mainland airlines have largely disappeared from the Western public’s radar, and their Taiwanese counterparts — EVA and Starlux in particular — have taken their place. I don’t want to bring politics here, but have Mainland Chinese airlines become so much worse postpandemic?

Not necessarily – you'll generally continue to see reviews of Chinese carriers over YouTube. I'd say that generally most people have just had Chinese visas expire over COVID-19, and not much incentive to renew them. There's generally a huge product investment push for airlines such as China Southern, whereas former frontrunners such as Hainan and Xiamen are known for doing okay.

It seems like we're in a second Cold War where everybody is avoiding Russia the same way everybody was avoiding the Soviet Union. Fortunately with the advent of efficient long range airliners, a stop in Anchorage is no longer necessary. Unfortunately, you could say that Russian aggression predates the invasion of Ukraine in 2022 where MH 17 was shot down in a similar fashion to KE007.

Fair point! So YouTube vlogs have almost completely replaced the Western blogosphere, as far as Mainland Chinese product reviews are concerned. Searching The Points Guy, for example, there’s pretty much nothing by way of Mainland reviews after COVID hit in 2020. It’s probably no coincidence that Starlux started around this time, and has quickly gotten rave reviewsfrom the Western world.

The refueling stop is at Urumqi URC.

JFK-SIN is 3mi (5km) longer than EWR-SIN.

I'm guessing QFs upcoming Project Sunrise is a no-go for you then...

P.s. you must be Irish! 😀

@Mike

Are you on drugs or just a bigot ?

MH 17 was shot down by Ukrainian terrorists in Chechnya .

KE 007 was well off course and mistaken for a 707 on a US reconnaissance mission.

I totally disagree. While SIN-EWR is very long, in SQ business class it's perfectly fine. It's 19 hours of down time to sleep, watch a lot of videos, work, read, and just do nothing and not be connected to the rest of the world. I sleep well in that seat (with eye shades and Ozlo sleepbuds playing white noise to mask what's going on around me) so it's kind of like having an entire day to myself with a few nice Asian meals thrown in.

Cheers mate, I hope you have a lovely day!

MH 17 was shot down by Russian controlled militias. Had nothing to do with Ukraine other than that’s where some of the debris fell.

@snic - the thing is that not every airline in this world is Singapore Airlines.

The refueling stop may be HGH Hangzhou, as it was last year.

You can look up 金毛评测犬 (GoldenReviewerCN) and 飞行男孩俱乐部 (FlyingBoysClub) on YouTube, who produces content on Chinese airlines for mainland platforms but also maintain similar posts on YouTube.

The Soviet pilot fired warning shots at the Korean airliner. They were also non responsive on radios. If the pilot refused orders to down the aircraft they would have been thrown in prison or worse.

In regards to the Cold War comment; the Soviets invaded Afghanistan for ten years. The Russia Ukraine war will end in less than half of that .

That's exactly what happened for me. My last Chinese visa for 10 years just expired recently and my last trip there was Fall 2019. I have no pending plans there in next few years but I am sure I will return eventually.

I'm by no means an expert, but to my knowledge the speed of planes is capped around mach 0.85 as afterwards it gets more inefficient due to transsonic efects. If there will be something like the Boom Overture which is supersonic it will of course reduce the flight time.

VT-CIE with all the imagination but lack any of the comprehension.

If you actually search a bit for tickets internationally and have experience flying these Chinese carriers you would understand.

Stop gaslighting other people with your imagination.

Chinese carrier reviews and reviewers are still there, rather than using only your imagination or relying on crappy content from som points guy, try using Google.

Just go back to "visualise yourself flying Qsuites or Air France or JAL or something of that kind! ;)"

@Alvin and others, this is actually quite amusing if true as the reality is that the People's Republic has gotten rid of visa requirements for a huge amount of Western nationalities.

I would speculate that the YouTube/blog split isn't random. YouTubers earn a living (or at least subsidise their travel costs) directly through their content whereas bloggers write stuff to generate interest for affiliate marketing for credit cards and so on. An assumption that bloggers are more likely to be US-based than YouTubers wouldn't seem far-fetched.

Now been confirmed as via Narita

On October 9, 2025, Xiamen Airlines submitted an application to the U.S. Department of Transportation to modify its Fuzhou–New York service. The change involves making a technical landing at Tokyo Narita Airport on the return flight MF50 from New York (JFK) to Fuzhou. The technical stop at Narita is expected to begin on October 20. This change has already been reflected in the flight schedule, and the aircraft type planned for operation is either a Boeing 787-8 or 787-9. However, it is unclear whether this stopover is intended for refueling or for crew change purposes.