Passengers endure what could be longest flight in history after LA-Hong Kong jet diverted by 'BLACK STORM'

UK Daily Mail ^ | August 6, 2025 | Alexa Cimino

[C19fan]

Passengers aboard a Cathay Pacific flight from Los Angeles to Hong Kong endured a nightmare journey that may have just broken the record for the world's longest commercial flight - but not in distance.

Flight CX883 took off from LAX at 12:55 am on August 4 with nearly 300 passengers onboard, expecting a 13-hour transpacific trip.

But a freak weather event over Hong Kong turned the flight into a 29-hour ordeal in the sky - and on the tarmac.

[DIRTYSECRET]

36 hours Thailand to Okinawa. Viet Nam had fallen, we were told to leave. The Pentagon sent a full compliment of replacements who then needed to be scattered all over SE Asia. Flew the long way around Vietnam, stopped at Clark, P.I., and ended up at Kadena. TDY orders had one guy on the front of the page and 130 of us typed on the back. All very haphazard. No one was allowed to return to CONUS unless they retired. We all sat in that web seating-military cargo planes. Talk about stupid.

[jimtorr]

I thought I had it bad on mil air. Working for a DoD contractor, I “got to” escort a cargo from Travis AFB to Japan, in February 1993. The cargo was placed on a KC-135.

As if that was not bat enough, we flew to Fairbanks for refueling, and the flight on to Japan was cancelled, due to a blizzard at the destination. Got on another KC-135 the next morning, along with a screaming baby. Oh, those delicious Air Force in-flight meals! At the destination, I found that my companies travel people had neglected to book us rooms for the night.

There was one bright spot, however. The cargo’s high priority allowed it to bump a colonel and entourage from the Fairbanks-Japan flight.

[Feckless]

I would have killed for your seats