Sydney, Oct 21 (TIWN) Australian flag carrier Qantas on Sunday said that it has completed testing a New York to Sydney flight, deemed as the world's longest with nearly 20 hours in the air without layovers, as part of a research on how the journey could affect the people onboard.

The Boeing 787-9 with 49 people on board took 19 hours and 16 minutes to fly from New York to Sydney, a 16,200-km (10,066-mile) route.  Next month, the company plans to test a non-stop flight from London to Sydney.  Qantas expects to decide on whether to start the routes by the end of 2019.  If it goes ahead with them, the services would start operating in 2022 or 2023.  How UK-Australia travel evolved to one flight Can long-haul air travel also be low cost? No commercial aircraft yet has the range to fly such an ultra-long haul route with a full passenger and cargo load, Reuters news agency reports.  To give the plane sufficient fuel range to avoid re-fuelling, the Qantas flight took off with maximum fuel, restricted baggage load and no cargo.