Passenger jet completes record flight

A TIRED but triumphant airline captain yesterday flew into the record books by taking command of the world’s longest-ever non-stop commercial plane flight.

Landing her Boeing 777-200LR at Heathrow after a 13,422-mile flight from Hong Kong, Captain Suzanna Darcy-Hennemann said: “It’s been a pleasure and a privilege.”

Heathrow fire crews poured volleys of water over the 777 in celebration as it taxied to a halt after an easterly-route journey of 22 hours 42 minutes.

With 35 people on board and following meticulous pre-flight planning on routing and fuel, the plane smashed the previous passenger airline distance record of 12,500 miles set by an earlier version of the Boeing 777 in 1997.

To mark the record, Guinness World Records representative Samantha Fay was at Heathrow to present a framed certificate to Boeing 777 programme vice president Lars Andersen.

With the aircraft and all the items going aboard carefully weighed, the plane had taken off from Hong Kong at around 2.30pm Irish time on Wednesday.

It had flown across the northern Pacific and across the northern part of the USA before continuing across the Atlantic, landing just before 1.15pm yesterday - around 10 minutes ahead of schedule.