World's longest A380 flight begins

Emirates has launched the world's longest Airbus A380 non-stop service, flying the double decker plane from Dubai to Los Angeles.

The daily flight crosses the Russian Federation, the North Pole and Eastern Canada and takes 16 hours and 20 minutes.

The 13,414km flight is part of Emirates' move to boost its ultra-long range flying and to stake out a bigger presence in the United States market.

While the A380 flight is amongst the longest, it is well short of what was the world's longest non-stop flight.

Singapore Airlines last month pulled out of its Singapore and New York flight - a 19-hour flight travelling 16,700km aboard an Airbus A340.

The airline said it wasn't commercially viable.

Emirates said it put the 489-seat A380 on the Dubai-Los Angeles in response to strong demand.

The airline had used a smaller Boeing 777 long range plane on the route since 2008.

Emirates operates 63 weekly flights from Dubai to the US serving seven gateways - Los Angeles, San Francisco, Seattle, Dallas, Houston, Washington DC and New York JFK, where two of the three daily flights are operated with A380s.

A daily service from Dubai to Boston will start next March.

The double decker on the Los Angeles route has 14 first class private suites, 76 lie-flat beds in business class and 399 spacious seats in economy class.

See an Emirates supplied video of the first flight here:

The A380's longest non-stop route on the Emirates' network to date has been the Dubai to New York, covering 11,023km during a flight of 13 hours and 26 minutes. The shortest A380 route is between Hong Kong and Bangkok - a distance of 1900km, with a flying time of two hours 20 minutes.