Qantas flies the Australian cricket team on a 16-hour direct flight from Brisbane to St Lucia

Australian airline Qantas is operating an unusual one-off direct flight from Brisbane in Queensland to St Lucia to allow the Australian cricket team to take part in a West India tour in a five-match T20I series. It’s the first time the team has visited the Caribbean in five years, and it’s only the team’s third round of overseas since the pandemic began.

While Cricket Australia may normally send its players and support staff on regular commercial flights to participate in such international tours, current COVID-19 travel restrictions and quarantine rules make it easier to lease the entire aircraft.

Qantas has been called to transport the team and their entourage on a two-year-old Boeing 787 Dreamliner for a 10,000-mile flight that should take about 16 hours. The flight flew over the vast emptiness of the South Pacific before crossing the South American Caribbean.

Although Qantas ’flight QF6079 is unusual, it is no longer as long as some of the airline’s regular pre-pandemic scheduled flights – helped by a bit of strong tailwinds.

When Qantas started a direct flight from Perth to London, it allowed 17 hours to complete a flight of just 9,009 miles, and a flight back to Australia could sometimes take about 16 hours and 20 minutes.

Although that flight is no longer operational due to the pandemic, Qantas has conducted some repatriation flights from London to a special quarantine facility in Darwin, in the northern region. But once again, these flights have been clocked in about 16 hours.

However, Qantas has an attraction on even longer flights once the pandemic is over, and plans to operate direct flights from Sydney and Melbourne to London and New York. Flight times are an amazing 20 hours one-way, and the airline has to order new Airbus A350s to make flights profitable.

Subscribe to the cabin crew newsletter

Get the latest cabin crew recruitment news in your inbox once a week …