Ultra Long flights to Europe

Quote: kenarman

It was Montreal to Madrid and I think it was non-stop but it might have had a fuel stop in England.

Usually if a plane stopped it was in Newfoundland (YQX Gander airport) as it is right on the way.
YYZ YQX 1,247 miles
YQX MAD 2,528 miles

But I think nonstops of 3,775 miles were not a big problem in 1967.


Madrid was pretty backwards in 1967, as Franco was still alive. I would love to hear your stories or see photos. Iberia was published in 1968 which is where I have my impressions of the country at that time.

It must have been non-stop looking at your map Paco since we definitely didn't stop in the US.

We had only a few hour lay-over in Madrid and then took a regional carrier to Malaga and a bus to Torremolinos. This before Torremolinos became built-up the way it is now. There were only a couple of relatively low rise condo complexes then. We slept on the beach while we were there. The first night two soldiers came along and kicked us in the butt to wake us up. Woke up looking into the wrong end of a machine gun, fairly memorable for a small town Canadian. We didn't speak Spanish and they didn't speak English. We did figure out that maybe we weren't supposed to be sleeping on the beach but I noticed that one of them kept looking at a bottle of wine sticking out of my pack. I pulled out the bottle of wine and offered him a drink. The two soldiers sat down and finished the wine with us. We gathered from sign language then that we could now spend the night on the beach. We made sure we had a new bottle of wine each night and they would stop by and drink it with us each night, we even managed to teach each other a few words of our own language. It probably helped that they weren't much older than us. We stayed less than a week including a side trip to Gibraltor and Algiers for a night. We were supposed to meet a friend in Torremolinos but he had left for England before we got there so we continued on our saga.

Quote: kenarman

This before Torremolinos became built-up the way it is now. There were only a couple of relatively low rise condo complexes then. We slept on the beach while we were there.

I love your story, please expand.

Even though James A. Michener was born in 1907, he was very interested in the tourist culture, the young people, the drugs and casual sex of the 1960's. He wrote "The Drifters" in 1971 that centered on Torremolinos for the first 7 chapters as all the characters gather together. It was three years after he wrote his non-fiction book Iberia, but he covered a lot of the same themes.

In chapter 8 they go to Algarve in Portugal to Albufeira and take LSD with a local bar owner. (I have been to Albufeira as well)
In chapter 9&10 they go to Pamplona
In chapter 11 they go to Mozambique
In chapter 12 they go to Marrakesh where Monica becomes addicted to heroin

I was age 13 when "The Drifters" was published, and it had a lot of influence on my fantasy life of what would happen when I was age 18-20.

Of course, when I was age 17 I finally got to Europe, but it just to a theater course in London. I didn't actually go to Torremolinos until I was in my 40's, and it was basically an aging urban block.

We stayed in a Fuengirola which is down the beach from Torremolinos.

Spain is one of those countries I would very much like never to visit.

Quote: Nareed

Spain is one of those countries I would very much like never to visit.

I have other Mexicans tell me their first choice would be London. Even if they only knew a little bit of English


Roughly 13.7 million Americans went to Europe in 2016. I don't have a convenient ranking by country, although it is fairly common to visit more than one place

4.3 million went to the United Kingdom
1.6 million went to Ireland
2.0 million went to Spain compared to 0.366 from Mexico

American Tourists abroad in percentage and million in 2016
17.3% Europe 13.7
9.8% Caribbean 7.7
6.6% Asia 5.3
2.5% South America 1.9
3.7% Central America 2.9
0.9% Oceania 0.7
2.7% Middle East 2.1
0.5% Africa 0.4
43.9% Total Overseas (2) 34.7

38.3% Mexico (Total) (3)(P) 30.3
(6) Mexico (Air) (2) 8.7
17.8% Canada (Total) (4) 14.1
(6) Canada (Air) (4) 4.5
56.1% North America 44.4
100.0% Grand Total 79.2

Just the US visitors to Mexico that went by air exceed any other single nation in the world except Canada (by air and overland)

I think the town of Ronda in Spain is one of the most spectacular in the world

One more short story for you Paco but not about Spain. We spent a couple of days in Paris but 1967 was about when Frommer's "Europe on $5 a day" came out and that was my bible. Even in 1967 we couldn't make that work in Paris. I had read a book about New York homeless called "Subways are for sleeping". So I figured this was the answer. Late in the evening we looked for the longest subway ride we could take hoping to maximize our sleep time. Unfortunately the subways in Paris didn't run all night and we had to get off the subway far from downtown in a suburb. Spent the night sleeping in a bit of an alcove on the outside of an apartment building waiting for the subway to start up again. The place we slept is probably a no go zone now :-)

This graphic is somewhat dated as United Airlines has introduced
Los Angeles -Singapore UA 37 Boeing 787-9 on 27 Oct 2017
Houston- Sydney UA 101 Boeing 787-9 on 18 Jan 2018



Singapore Airlines resumes flights from Singapore to EWR tomorrow (LAX next month).

The flights were discontinued in 2013 because of the fuel consumption with 4 engine aircraft. The airline has procured new 2 engine aircraft from Airbus (67 business and 94 Executive Economy Class) to resume the flights (no basic economy class).

The older 4 engine aircraft had 64 business class and 117 Executive Economy Class seats when it began in 2004, but SIA phased out the Executive Economy Class in favor of 100-seat all-Business Class flights in 2008 before discontinuing flights in 2013 at the height of fuel prices.

Still no word on "Project Sunrise" the program by Qantas to select of an aircraft to fly Sydney to NYC & London. The aircraft being used by SIA might at least make it from SYD to NYC, but Qantas is not interested in such limited seating.