Flight first for Qantas

QANTAS has made history while bringing more than 100 Australians home, flying for more than 17 hours straight from Buenos Aires to Darwin.

The repatriation flight travelled 15,020km in 17 hours and 25 minutes, during which the 107 Australians returning home and four pilots were treated to views of Antarctica.

It’s more than 500km longer than the non-stop London to Perth flight that was Qantas’s previous longest nonstop flight. The flight also marked a milestone for Darwin, which became the first airport in Australia to have received non-stop flights from all six permanently inhabited continents.