Originally Posted by
pinniped
It begs the question: does it make financial sense to do a technical stop? Assume it is a route where only one carrier flies the nonstop, so there's no competitive disadvantage to 17 hours gate-to-gate vs. 16 hours. Would flying two 8-hour segments (plus reserves) burn less total fuel than a single 16-hour segment? Or do the costs associated with the 2nd take-off and climb to cruise altitude more than burn up the savings?
Airlines used to have technical stops all over the place because they were limited by aircraft range. With longer range aircraft, I assume they got rid of them for competitive reasons. But maybe they make sense on these ultra-long flights?
Some portion of passengers might actually *like* them on a 16+ hour trip.
The thing is you cannot stop at the north pole for your tech stop. So it would be definitely more. Assuming it takes 1 hour to stop and refuel and to do everything anyway. So 16 versus much more?
Of course it depends where you are flying to, going to Australia there isn't much point to the great circle route. But going to the Middle East you often go all the way up to the north pole, so EK cannot really do a tech stop.