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Airlines have been flying over the Pacific Ocean since the 1930s - here's how the practice evolved over the years
Airlines have been flying over the Pacific Ocean since the 1930s - here's how the practice evolved over the years
Thomas PalliniMar 15, 2020, 18:38 IST
Transpacific flying began in 1935 with Pan American World Airways launching flying boats from San Francisco to destinations across Asia, Australia, and Oceania.
The practice quickly evolved as aircraft technology increasing, reducing the number of stops in order to traverse the ocean.
The Boeing 747 allowed for nonstop flights between continents as it traversed the Pacific with ease.
Then relaxed regulations for twin-engine aircraft later saw smaller aircraft begin flying transpacific routes.
The skies above the Pacific are now diverse with a wide variety of aircraft flying countless flights on a daily basis.
Flying over oceans has been a common practice in aviation since before World War II.
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With the aerial mode of transportation offering quicker journey times than ocean liners, airlines quickly began to standardize the practice and offer reliable, scheduled services that would be a large step in making the world a smaller place.
Transatlantic flying was the primary focus as Western Europe and the eastern United States were closer in terms of both distance and historical ties but flying over the Pacific Ocean soon became an area of interest for airlines.
Though the stakes were higher, with a notable shortage of land existing between the Hawaiian Islands and the mainland US, establishing air routes across the Pacific was of strategic importance not only for airlines seeking to grow their route networks, but also the military as World War II loomed.
Thanks to innovations in aircraft technology, flying across the Pacific is a daily occurrence for countless airlines seeking to connect cites on both sides of the international dateline, as well as the numerous islands throughout Oceania.
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Here's how transpacific flying has evolved over the years.
Island hopping was a common practice in the early days of transpacific flying, with the propeller aircraft of the time not having the range of today's airliners.
A flight between California and China, for example, would need to stop in Hawaii, Midway Island, Wake Island, Guam and Manila along the way, a week's journey.
As aircraft technology advanced following the war, routes grew longer and a flight from Sydney to San Francisco, for example, could be flown with only two stops in Fiji and Hawaii on aircraft such as the Lockheed Constellation...
And later, the Boeing 707.
Quad-engine narrow-body aircraft such as the Douglas DC-8 could also make the journey between the US and Asia with a single stop, greatly bringing travel times down.
The strides made by the jet age of the mid-1900s soon allowed for nonstop flights over the Pacific Ocean between continents, with the four-engine Boeing 747 being able to fly from cities throughout the mainland US to Asia, Australia, and Oceania with ease.
The 747 later became a staple on transpacific flights thanks to its capacity and range.
Three and four-engine aircraft dominated the skies over the Pacific as the prevailing theory for flying over the ocean was that there was safety in the number of engines a plane had.
The revolution in transpacific flying then came in the mid-1980s when the Federal Aviation Administration granted twin-engine aircraft the ability to fly overwater routes through a program called Extended Twin-engine Overwater Performance Standards or ETOPS.
Under ETOPS, twin-engine aircraft were given ratings in minutes that determined how far they can stray from a diversion airport in the event of an engine failure where an emergency landing would be required.
The first twin-engine aircraft to perform an ETOPS flight was a Trans World Airlines Boeing 767 that flew transatlantic between New York and Paris, kicking off a twin-engine revolution in aviation that would see the demise of three and four-engine aircraft.
With relaxed rules for twin-engine aircraft flying over water, Boeing and Airbus both developed widebody, twin-engine aircraft including the Boeing 777 and Airbus A330 designed to operate overwater routes more efficiently than larger aircraft.
The practice soon expanded to the Pacific, with flights to Asia increasing being operated by twin-engine flights on North Pacific routes.
Soon enough, twin-engine planes were taking over routes over both oceans and serving destinations once only served by planes with more than two engines.
Qantas became one of the more recent airlines to retire its Boeing 747s from transpacific routes in 2019, largely replacing them with twin-engine aircraft,...
Such as the Boeing 787 Dreamliner.
Flying over the Pacific is such a common practice that even narrow-body aircraft such as the Boeing 737 and Airbus A320 can fly safely between the mainland US and Hawaii and even between Alaska and Hawaii.
Routes to destinations such as Australia, Tahiti, Hawaii, New Zealand, and Fiji all see twin-engine aircraft thanks to the ETOPS program.
LATAM Airlines is one of the most notable airlines flying transpacific routes as it connects South America and Australia through a notoriously desolate corridor of the Pacific.
The aircraft used by LATAM, however, is the Boeing 787 Dreamliner, which can fly for over five hours on a single-engine.
