Qantas to let fly with flight from N.Y. to Sydney lasting 20 hours
For decades, travelers have stoically endured jet lag as an unavoidable menace on long journeys.
Now, as airlines push for recordbreaking nonstop flights halfway around the planet, efforts to counter the debilitating symptoms are turning into a billiondollar industry.
Fresh insight into the physical and emotional toll of ultralong haul travel should emerge this weekend when Qantas Airways flies direct from New York to Sydney.
No airline ever has completed that route without stopping. At nearly 20 hours, it’s set to be the world’s longest flight, leaving the U.S. on Friday and landing in Australia during its Sunday morning.
This will be more than an endurance exercise. Scientists and medical researchers in the cabin will turn Qantas’s brandnew Boeing Dreamliner into a highaltitude laboratory.
They’ll screen the brains of the pilots for alertness, while monitoring the food, sleep and activity of the few dozen passengers.
The aim is to see how humans hold up to the ordeal.
The proliferation of superlong flights — Singapore Airlines resumed nonstop services to New York last year — is partly driven by the development of lighter, more aerodynamic aircraft that can fly farther.
The physical burden on customers is putting a renewed focus on jet lag and creating a supermarket of products and homemade creations to ease the suffering. In that shopping basket: melatonin tablets, Pfizer’s antianxiety medication Xanax, and Propeaq lightemitting glasses that claim to get the body back on track.
And yes, there’s an app for that and many other potential remedies.
The potential customer base is staggering. The International Air Transport Association expects some 4.6 billion people to take a flight in 2019, a total that will jump to 8.2 billion in 2037.
Demand for jetlag therapies is growing at about 6 percent each year and the industry will be worth $732 million in 2023, according to BIS Healthcare.
The broader sleepingdisorder market — dominated by pills — is worth $1.5 billion and will swell to $1.7 billion by 2023, GlobalData says, adding that more than 80 drugs targeting disturbed sleep are in clinical development.
Jet lag typically strikes when a traveler crosses three times zones or more in quick order, leaving the body’s internal clock running to the timetable at home.
The chief complaint after touching down is often overwhelming fatigue during the day or merciless insomnia at night.
The fallout can be worse heading east, because traveling in that direction effectively reverses the normal dayandnight cycle.
Unsettling as they are, those ailments barely do jet lag justice.
Internal clocks
Each of the billions of cells in the human body has its own clock, and vital processes including heart function, food absorption and metabolism all are disrupted when organs get out of step, said Carrie Partch, a biochemist and associate professor at the University of California Santa Cruz who has studied the circadian rhythm for 20 years.
“Jet lag is more than just an inconvenience,” Partch said. “It’s pretty devastating physiologically. If you’re a constant traveler, you’ll probably put on more weight, you’ll probably have cardiovascular challenges and you may have some behavioral changes.”
While researchers in this field understand how light enters the brain and adjusts the master clock, they’re still learning more.
As recently as 2017, scientists won a Nobel prize for discovering molecular mechanisms that control circadian rhythms. Even if the core proteins of a rodent can be manipulated in a laboratory to speed up internal clock adjustment, a fastacting pill that can do the same for frequent flyers is a way off, Partch said.
Scientists have found exercise and the right food can help synchronize the body to a new time zone, though research also repeatedly has shown sunlight is the most powerful tool. A University of Boulder Colorado study in 2017 said bodyclock adjustment can be rapidly achieved by exposure to natural light alone.
Friday’s flight from New York, and another from London later this year, are key tests for Qantas as it prepares to start direct commercial services from those cities to Sydney as soon as 2022. The airline calls it Project Sunrise.
If successful, Qantas says other superlong, nonstop routes from Australia’s east coast to South America and Africa might follow.
Airbus SE and Boeing are vying to supply the carrier with new longrange aircraft that can reach the destination with a full load and fuel to spare. Qantas plans to make a decision to press ahead with these flights — or ditch the idea — by the end of the year.
It’s not just crossing time zones that upsets passengers. General fatigue, poorquality sleep, as well as the dry and pressurized cabin air exacerbate jetlag symptoms, said Conrad Moreira, a medical director at the Travel DoctorTMVC clinic in Sydney who has worked in the field more than a decade.
“I’ve seen people disoriented a week after a flight,” Moreira said in an interview.
He prescribes a range of sleepinducing drugs, particularly for anxious fliers. They including Stilnox — also known as Ambien — and Xanax.
Tablets containing melatonin, naturally produced in the body to promote sleep, also can help, he said.
Jet lag has been confounding travelers since, well, the jet era. There are already at least half a dozen ultralong flights lasting 17 hours or more, including an AucklandDoha service by Qatar Airways. Qantas last year started direct services to London from Perth on Australia’s western seaboard.
Working against the flights
Just like all those routes, Qantas’ planned network of longer, clockbusting flights will be prey to rising fuel prices. Also, there’s a growing movement to encourage fliers to cut their carbon emissions.
The airline’s plan follows a threeyear turnaround that delivered record profits and sent the stock soaring fivefold in five years.
Addressing the health implications of ultralong flights is critical for Qantas. It must gain permission from Australia’s civil aviation regulator for cabin crew to be on duty longer than 20 hours. It also needs a new deal with pilots who will fly the extralong routes .
Managing staff exhaustion from lengthy trips is an issue for the entire industry. According to IATA’s latest fatiguemanagement manual, some cabin crew can spend almost 21 hours awake on the day of a longhaul flight — even when their duty period is shorter than 10 hours.
Qantas’s ultralong direct flights will be priced squarely at the business traveler, since they stand to win precious hours on the ground at the destination, said Rico Merkert, professor of transport and supplychain management at the University of Sydney’s business school.