Although technically capable aircraft exist today, flying the so-called ‘Kangaroo Route’ between London and Sydney nonstop has proven elusive for airlines, both from the point of view of profitability and customer comfort.
First of all, traveling the 10,573 nautical miles between London and Sydney requires almost 20 hours in the air at today’s jetliner cruising speeds – an inhuman amount of time to spend in a pressurized metal tube, even if you’re lucky enough to. lie -First class flat seat. Second, the fuel economy of long routes is notoriously poor, so most don’t last long: A notable decline from the early 2000s was Singapore Airlines’ nonstop Singapore-Newark route (although the airline restarted it in October 2018).
Despite this, various aviation minds and entrepreneurs believe not only that non-stop London-Sydney could become a profitable route, but they believe that it can be flown in four hours, or even less!
A successor to Concorde?
If you have any arithmetic aptitude, the obvious solution to the London-Sydney flight time problem is to increase your speed substantially. As, say, the creators of the short-lived Concorde supersonic jet did, when they designed an aircraft capable of flying 1,200 miles per hour, more than twice as fast as any contemporary commercial jet.
As of this writing, companies like Gulfstream, Lockheed Martin, and even NASA are racing to try and build a so-called “Son of Concord,” only this son would be slightly more powerful than his father, to the tune of 2,500. miles. per hour, or maybe even faster.
The supersonic problem
The problem with Concorde, of course, was not so much the price that the fliers had to pay or the one (but extremely high) Concorde accident that occurred in 2000 at Paris’ Charles de Gaulle airport. Rather, the main barrier to conventional supersonic flight is… well, the sound barrier and the “sonic boom” that an airplane creates when it breaks.
For flights that travel primarily over water (like New York to London and Paris, which were the bread and butter of the Concorde), this was not a problem. But from London to Sydney (and, to be sure, many of the ultra-long-haul flights in the world) require travel over land masses, the parties listed above are scrambling to find a way to minimize or even erase the effect of the sonic booms in terrestrial civilization.
Richard Branson’s Solution
Not surprisingly, mega-entrepreneur and general visionary Richard Branson has come up with a solution. And just as surprising, your solution seems absolutely far-fetched on first reading.
Branson envisions flying London-Sydney (and other super long routes) without using a supersonic plane, but using a Virgin Galactic “space plane” that travels into space, rather than through the atmosphere. Doing so would not only allow the plane to take advantage of the speeds of a rocket as it moves through zero gravity (Branson predicts that London-Sydney will take three hours or even less), but would also have almost no impact on the environment in compared to today. flying.
For now, though, travelers between London and Sydney will need to ‘hop’ like a kangaroo, with stops along the way in Hong Kong, Singapore, Dubai, Abu Dhabi, to name a few of the routes. As of March 2018, travelers originating from the city of Perth in Western Australia can fly to London nonstop, although Sydney will not enjoy nonstop service to London, by space, or Boeing’s next-generation 777X aircraft, until at least 2021.
