New Delhi:
An all-females group of Air India is set to make history when they pilot the longest non-cease industrial flight operated by any airline to India later in the week. The flight is becoming operated on a Boeing 777-200LR aircraft and will final more than 17 hours and might touch 16,000 kilometres in distance, based on the route flown.
“It’s 16,000-odd km. So, we are looking at world’s longest flight. And, yes, we are going to try and fly the polar route (over the North Pole). However, it depends on multitude of factors like solar radiations and the turbulence. So, we are going to sit tight and hope that we will go polar and break all sorts of records,” stated Captain Zoya Aggarwal, the lead pilot on flight AI 176.
The flight departs San Francisco at 8:30 PM (Local Time) today and lands at Bengaluru’s Kempegowda International Airport at 3.45 AM (nearby time) on January 11, 2021.
Flying more than the Arctic would shorten the distance involving the two technologies hubs — Bengaluru and San Francisco — which are roughly 13,993 km apart, and on opposite ends of the planet with a time zone lag of 13.5 hours.
“The route will be San Francisco-Seattle-Vancouver and we would be going as high as 82 degrees north. Technically, we aren’t flying right over the pole but we are right next to it. And then we come south, most probably over Russia, and further down south to Bengaluru,” Captain Papagari Thanmai, 1 of the 4 pilots onboard told .
Air India Executive Director of Flight Safety, Capt Nivedita Bhasin, is also be traveling on this flight, a statement from the airline stated, adding that this is the very first ever non-cease route involving the West Coast of USA and South India.
Air India also plans to commence its very first ever non-cease service involving Hyderabad and Chicago from January 15.