Intrepid travellers and more casual holidaymakers alike can almost certainly agree on one thing.

After a while, the novelty of a long-haul flight wears off and the experience can become more than a little unpleasant.

Spending hours crammed into a small flying box with hundreds of others – including crying children and those without a grasp of basic hygiene. It can be testing at best, without even considering the strange mealtimes and discomfort in trying to sleep sitting up.

Of course, when you reach your destination it’s all worth it. But could you stand to spend over a day in the sky?

At present, the world’s longest continuous flight is Singapore Airlines’ mammoth route from Singapore to New York (19 hours), though Quantas is set to launch a 22-hour marathon from Sydney to London in 2027.

However, in December 2025, a new long-haul option hit the headlines. Though it wasn’t a continuous flight, so it won’t take the crown from Singapore Airlines just yet, China Eastern Airlines pioneered its “air Silk Road,” linking China to Argentina.

With a two-hour stopover in Auckland, New Zealand, the Boeing 777 flew from Shanghai Pudong airport to Buenos Aires in an impressive 25 hours.

That’s right, in just an hour over a full day’s travel, you could travel around 20,000 kilometers from East to West.

According to an announcement from the airline, the record-breaking flight would shorten the journey by four hours:

“China Eastern Airlines’ upcoming Shanghai Pudong-Auckland-Buenos Aires route will be the world’s first commercial route connecting cities at these points of intersection, and will also break the record for the world’s longest one-way flight.”

In the new flight schedule, passengers will depart Shanghai at 2am Beijing time and arrive in Buenos Aires at 4:30pm Argentina time, with the return flight also leaving Argentina at 2am local time, arriving into Shanghai at 6pm (Beijing time) the next day.

Is this the future of air travel? In uniting East and West, North and South, China Eastern certainly think so.

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