Rory Sutherland Rory Sutherland

Why better beats bigger

issue 13 October 2018

A few weeks ago I flew to Sydney to speak at a conference. The first leg was on the new Qantas route non-stop from London to Perth, the UK’s longest flight. Two million people live in Perth, of whom 250,000 were born in the UK, so the route makes sense. But I was dreading the length of the flight.

Granted, I wasn’t travelling at the back of the plane, but I was surprised to find the 16-hour flight little worse than an eight- or ten-hour one. For one, there is the unexpected bonus that you can fall asleep whenever you like. On shorter flights, if you miss a narrow window-of-nod an hour or so after take-off, you are doomed to get too little sleep; here you could flip between sleeping, watching films and reading at your whim.

But the real difference is the airliner.

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