Chili, chocolate and the world's longest flight

Come October 2027, Qantas will fly Sydney to London nonstop, the longest scheduled flight on Earth. The airline spent a decade figuring out how to keep passengers sane for the 22-hour ride.

Nearly a full day in a metal tube is exactly as rough as it sounds. Qantas knows this. So instead of pretending otherwise, the airline spent years studying how to make the misery bearable, and, to its credit, said so out loud.

Qantas recruited 23 volunteers and watched what a marathon at cruising altitude does to a human body. The findings shaped the lighting, the meal timing and the menu.

The Wellbeing Zone: A stretch of open cabin between economy and premium economy, free to everyone on board. Passengers can stand, do a guided stretch, drink some water and eat snacks, and remind themselves their legs they still work. On a flight this long, that's maintenance.

What's on the tray: Spiced dishes to keep riders sharp during their destination's daylight hours. Fast-acting carbs and soups. Milk-based desserts to coax flyers toward sleep. And when it's finally time to go down for the night, a hot chocolate nightcap, the kind of thing mother's made before bed, now doing shift work at 40,000 feet.

The bottom line: Plenty of people are asking why anyone would climb aboard a 22-hour flight in the first place. Qantas is betting that if you design the trip around actual humans, enough of them will show up to keep the route in the air.