
What commercial flight route has the biggest number of stops/layovers? - nulladventurer
http://travel.stackexchange.com/questions/81783/what-commercial-flight-route-has-the-biggest-number-of-minimum-possible-stops
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russnewcomer
I did a six-flight trip once (one overnight stay involved due to final flight
being on an EAS leg), with 56 hours, I think, of traveling. Could have pushed
it to 7 if I hadn't already been at the one international airport in the
origin country, and I could have cut the EAS leg out if my family had driven 2
to 4 hours each way to be able to get me at a larger airport. Friend of mine
did a trip that required, I think, 9 flights once. (from somewhere in the
Alaskan bush to BDO)

I think anytime I have to flight with multiple flights over 4 hours is brutal.
I've done ATL-DXB direct flights with a flight on both sides of that, and I've
done ORD-DXB with a stop at LHR or FRA with an additional flight on both
sides. I'd much rather have one 15 hour flight than two eight hours. On the 15
hour you can sleep some, maybe get a little ahead of jetlag if your timing
lines up well. On the eight hour, you just get abbreviated naps, no sleep
cycle, and you might think, oh, but you can get out and stretch your legs,
usually what ends up happening is you get stuck going through customs
somewhere and stand in line forever, then cram yourself into another plane.
Give me one flight.

~~~
knz
56 hours! Wow.

My worst was 42 hours (with an 8 month old baby) going from the US to New
Zealand via Australia. It included an unscheduled 10 hours in SYD due to
Virgin Australia not understanding visa regulations for New Zealand. VA tried
to have us sent back to the US and Australian customs ended up giving the
airline a five figure fine due to how long they delayed us. The thought of
another 15 hour flight with a baby after 38 hours was not a happy one...

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olegkikin
I once flew from Hawaii to the middle of Russia, booked last moment due to an
emergency.

5 different flights to get there, 4 to return.

45 hours to get there, 36 hours to get back.

Crying babies next to me on 3 of the flights.

Worst flying experience ever.

~~~
beachstartup
well, at least your life sounds much more exciting than mine.

curious, how much does an emergency ticket like that cost?

~~~
andrewaylett
The cheapest one-way ticket from HNL to CEK (Chelyabinsk) tomorrow costs
$2100. Getting there as quickly as possible (so leaving today and taking only
35h to get there) costs $3k.

Source: your favourite meta-search. And since I work for one, I won't link any
:).

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dmbaggett
As alluded to in the stack overflow comments, Carl de Marcken (ITA Chief
Scientist) wrote some code to determine the longest possible shortest path
between two airports with scheduled flights. At that time (circa 2000) the
answer was Wasu, New Guinea to Peawanuck, Ontario. The best you could do was
something like 48 hours and involved a very large number of flights. On a bad
day the best you could do was over 90 hours.

Maybe somebody at Google could run the lisp function that computes that on
current data and post the answer.

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alexkennedy
The United Island Hopper famously has 6 stops throughout the Pacific between
Honolulu and Guam visiting 7 different islands.

([http://www.cntraveler.com/story/the-united-island-hopper-
sev...](http://www.cntraveler.com/story/the-united-island-hopper-seven-
islands-20-hours-one-plane))

HNL > MA > KWA > KSA > PNI > TKK > GUM

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coldcode
Typically a single flight number can only accommodate 4 legs/segment one way
as this is a limitation in most GDS systems. Of course a ticket buyer can
combine flights to create more legs if necessary but airlines don't schedule
more than 4. 4 leg flights are not common however. A leg/segment is defined as
a takeoff and landing. So a 4 leg flight would be A to B to C to D one way.

~~~
jessaustin
That seems like a 3 leg? "A to B" is a one leg right?

~~~
knd775
I agree. I'd consider that 3 legs with 4 locations.

~~~
coldcode
Whoops didn't add enough, should have been A-B-C-D-E.

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teh_klev
The longest flight I did was when I returned from a visit to New Zealand in
2004:

Invercargill -> Christchurch -> Auckland -> Los Angeles -> London LHR ->
Edinburgh

The journey took around 36 hours and was largely uneventful. What I did learn
was to check your baggage weight allowances; I ended up wearing quite a few of
my clothes on the Invercargill to Christchurch leg :)

~~~
mnw21cam
If it was Air New Zealand, they will allow the weight allowance for the long-
haul part for your entire journey if booked as a single journey.

~~~
teh_klev
The Invercargill flight wasn't on my original itinerary as I thought I'd be
driving up to Christchurch to catch first leg. So when I rolled up at the
Invercargill check in I got a surprise:)

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bahro
You can compare these with some early 20th century routes from London to
Australia, which had dozens of stops:

[http://www.timetableimages.com/ttimages/complete/iaw35aus/ia...](http://www.timetableimages.com/ttimages/complete/iaw35aus/iaw35u-2.jpg)
[https://i.kinja-img.com/gawker-media/image/upload/s--
M9zDODc...](https://i.kinja-img.com/gawker-media/image/upload/s--
M9zDODcS--/c_scale,fl_progressive,q_80,w_800/197no3wzaeuchjpg.jpg)

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pokoleo
These answers are ridiculously low.

In Northern Canada, flights are chained. This means that to go from Old Crow
(YOC) to Whitehorse (YXY), you need to do:

1\. Old Crow (YOC) -> Inuvik

2\. Inuvik -> Dawson City

3\. Dawson City -> Whitehorse

Even getting to NY from there adds another two stops:

4\. Whitehorse -> Vancouver

5\. Vancouver -> Newark

Supposing you wanted to go to the Galapagos, the shortest trip from
Yellowknife happens to go through Newark/New York City (yes, you'd need to
change airports):

6\. New York City -> Guayaquil

7\. Guayaquil -> San Cristóbal Island

But you could probably find better results if you looked to leave the western
hemisphere and go somewhere like VOG (7 segments total), UTN (8 segments
total), or TMR (8 segments total).

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SaraMitchell
Don't have to be particularly obscure cities to get a lot of segments. I once
had to take a last minute flight from Cape Town to Seattle (before the direct
Jo-burg to Atlanta route existed).

Cape Town > Johannesburg > Amsterdam > Atlanta > Seattle.

4 segments... and about 40 hours... gooooooood times :)

~~~
lisper
BA flies Cape Town -> Heathrow. From there we went on direct to SFO but I'd be
surprised if you can't get to SEA from there.

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brianbreslin
My longest travel was MIA-DOH-BKK-Chang Mai 33 hours of travel due to layovers
etc. MIA-DOH was fairly pleasant on the qatar a380.

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tiatia
Brain Teaser, try to fly to FYN (CN) and back.

But regarding your question. I once flew NYC<>Asunción. I don't remember the
stops anymore but it was at least three, including El Salvador and Lima.

~~~
mikeash
What's special about FYN? I search for round-trip flights from IAD and had no
trouble. The standard route seems to be IAD-PEK-URC-FYN.

