The world’s longest flight is put to the test
By Maureen O'Hare, CNN
(CNN) — In travel news this week: the world’s most powerful passports, how edible ants got a chef in trouble, plus a new milestone in ultra-long-haul air travel.
Project Sunrise
Having a nice relaxing weekend? Spare a thought for the weary new Airbus A350-1000ULR, which is cooling its jets in Melbourne after completing its first-ever nonstop test flight from France. And it has to do it all over again on Monday.
Clocking in at more than 19 hours for the Toulouse to Melbourne test, the scheduled routes could stretch up to 22 hours and more than 10,000 miles.
The plane has been developed to fly the Australian airline Qantas’ upcoming record-breaking route from Sydney to London. It will be the world’s’s longest non-stop commercial flight when it launches in October 2027.
A crew of four Airbus flight test pilots and five flight test engineers put the aircraft’s systems through their paces on the flight from Toulouse on Thursday, including the extra 20,000-liter fuel tank that holds the juice to keep it in the air for nearly a full day.
CNN’s Richard Quest took a look inside the ultra-long-range plane last month. Watch the video below.
Passports and border checks
In 2006, a United States passport was the ultimate ticket to the world, offering its citizens a level of seamless global access matched only by two other nations: Denmark and Finland.
What a difference 20 years makes. A new report comparing the travel freedoms of passports around the world in the 21st century shows that the status of the US passport has been in slow decline, with 36 countries now ahead of it in the ranking.
The highest ranking passport in the European Union, according to the Henley Passport Index, is Sweden. The country’s citizens can successfully bypass the EU’s new Entry Exit System (EES), which means non-EU citizens arriving in the 29-country Schengen zone must now have their biometrics taken. The new system has led to border control bottlenecks in some airports, but it’s just one of several tricky factors to navigate in what is a tough summer for European travel. (CNN subscribers can read the full story here).
There’s one itty bitty European border that just got easier to cross, however. The physical border fence between the southern tip of Spain and the British territory of Gibraltar was removed earlier this month, under a historic treaty between the EU and the UK.
The contested British overseas territory of 38,000 people is perched at the tip of the Iberian Peninsula, in a strategic location just miles across the water from Morocco.
Wilderness, wildlife and ‘wow’ factor
Continuing our countdown of America’s Best Towns to Visit in 2026, we have Juneau, Alaska, at No.7.
Alaska’s remote, hard-to-reach capital is the largest state capital in the nation by land mass and there sure is a lot to love. For starters, Juneau is located in a rainforest, it has its own glacier and its residents include bears, mountain goats and whales.
Of Juneau’s more than 1.5 million annual visitors, more than 90% arrive by cruise ship. But there’s plenty of room and activities for everyone, even during the busy summers.
Take a look, too, at Roanoke, Virginia, at No. 10, Lawrence, Kansas, at No. 9 and Iowa City, Iowa at No.8.
Canada’s Spotted Lake
The geological wonder Spotted Lake, or Lake Khiluk in the Nsyilxcən language, is located just outside Osoyoos, British Columbia. Its distinctive, colorful spots are created by a combination of chemistry, geology and climate.
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What do you remember from the week that was?
His restaurant put edible ants on the menu.
Now he could face one year in prison.
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