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Qantas bumps Delta for longest flight to depart USA

Ben Mutzabaugh
USA TODAY
The Qantas kangaroo got a makeover for the airline's maiden A380 flight from Sydney to Dallas/Fort Worth.

The title for the longest regularly scheduled airline departure from the United States changes hands Monday.

Qantas takes over the top spot today, with its Dallas/Fort Worth-to-Sydney route bumping Delta's Atlanta-to-Johannesburg route to No. 2.

That comes after Qantas switched to the Airbus A380 superjumbo jet for its flights between Sydney and DFW. Previously, the carrier used Boeing 747s for its flights on the route. The switch to the A380 allows Qantas to fly nonstop both directions on the route.

Previously, Qantas' 747-operated flights on the Australia-bound leg had to make a refueling stop in Brisbane because of the typically strong headwinds that direction. The A380 has the range to fly both directions with no stops on the route, which OAG puts at 7,452 nautical miles. The DFW-to-Brisbane route had been the fifth-longest departure from the USA, but it is now replaced with Qantas' nonstop flight to Sydney.

With a distance of 7,452 nautical miles (roughly 8,580 statute miles), Qantas' DFW-to-Sydney route moves up to the No. 1 spot for the longest regularly scheduled airline flight to depart a U.S. airport, according to airline data provider OAG. Qantas says the Texas-bound flight takes about 14 hours, 50 minutes while the Australia-bound return takes about 15 hours, 30 minutes. The Qantas route edges the previous title holder, Delta. That airline's 7,329 nautical-mile trip (about 8,440 statute miles) from Atlanta to Johannesburg slips to No. 2.

Check out our photo gallery at the top for a full list of the 50 longest regularly scheduled airline flights to depart from the United States and Canada. The data for the list comes courtesy of OAG, a top airline data provider whose specialties include airline schedules (OAG once stood for "Official Airline Guide").

You can click through to see all the flights in the "Top 50," starting with No. 50 — Vancouver, Canada, to Auckland, New Zealand — and going all the way through Qantas' new No. 1 from DFW to Sydney.

The list was compiled with flights scheduled to operate as of Oct. 1, 2014, and looks only at departures leaving the U.S. and Canada. The list of "longest" flights is based on the nautical mile-distance of the flights flown. Some recently added flights — such as Emirates' nonstop from Chicago to Dubai and China Southern's from New York to Guangzhou — are recent additions to the "top 50."

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