Why All Flights Go the Long Way

Every night, a Singapore Airlines A350 lifts off from New York and begins the longest scheduled flight in the world — nearly 19 hours to Singapore. But instead of flying straight across the Pacific, it arcs east over Europe and the Middle East. It looks completely illogical… until you understand how global aviation really works. In this video, we follow that journey — Flight SQ23 — to uncover the hidden rules that shape the skies. From great circle routes and jetstreams, to closed airspace, ETOPS, and North Atlantic Tracks, we reveal why flights almost never take the shortest path… and why the long way is often faster, safer, and cheaper. This is the global logic behind flight paths — and it’s a lot more complicated than you think.