The world's longest non-stop commercial flight has landed in New York on Friday morning, ending a journey from Singapore of more than 15,000km in 17 hours and 52 minutes, reports BBC.
Singapore Airlines relaunched the service five years after it was cut because it had become too expensive.
Flight SQ22 landed at 0529 US Eastern time with 150 passengers and 17 crew.
Geoffrey Thomas, editor-in-chief of Airlineratings.com, said the time passed swiftly and had not seemed like a 17-and-a-half hour flight.
He told the BBC: "The flight was effortless and very smooth.
"On board the consensus was that the time passed very quickly and didn't seem like 17.5 hours."
The inaugural flight from Changi Airport to Newark's international airport, which services New York, took off amid much fanfare.
Qantas launched a 17-hour non-stop service from Perth to London earlier this year, while Qatar runs a 17.5-hour service between Auckland and Doha.
Singapore Airlines (SIA) said there is demand for customers for non-stop services which help cut travelling times compared with flights which have a stopover.
Ahead of the take-off, the airline told the BBC that business class seats for the flight were fully booked, and there were "a very limited number" of premium economy seats left.
A business class ticket entitles passengers to two meals, and the choice of when they are served, plus refreshments in between. They will also have a bed to sleep in.
Premium economy fares get three meals at fixed times, with refreshments in between.
The airline said it is not planning to offer any economy bookings on the route.
The brand new Airbus plane that SIA is using has been configured to seat 161 passengers in all - 67 business passengers and 94 premium economy passengers.
Geoffrey Thomas said: "This is a route between two massive financial hubs, and so they will fill this plane up with business people, or well-heeled travellers who want the convenience of a non stop flight.
"It's also been proven that when carriers introduce a new non-stop route, the traffic on that route increases threefold."
Mr Thomas, the editor-in-chief of airline rating site Airlineratings.com, has been on several such inaugural flights, including Qantas' new long-haul from Perth to London, inaugurated earlier this year.
Qantas, meanwhile, is in advanced discussions with Airbus and Boeing over an aircraft capable of making a 20-hour flight between London and Sydney.
The Australian national flag carrier also plans to fly non-stop from Australia to New York - slightly shorter than the London-Sydney non-stop flight.
But Max Kingsley-Jones, group editor of Flight Global, warned that plans for new non-stop routes had a habit of changing in line with the economics of the world.
