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Comment by amanda99 | Hacker News Reader

OK, sure, I plugged this into a sim flight planner (http://onlineflightplanner.org/). This is on a Dreamliner.

    Heathrow - Changi: 63933 kgs
    
    Heathrow - Tehran: 26957 kgs
    Tehran - Changi: 39580 kgs

So at least based on this it's not too much of a difference, only 4% more with a stop. (Tehran looked to be roughly in the middle on the flight plan between London and Singapore.)

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Interesting, I'd expect it to be a larger difference considering how much the carriers avoid stopovers.

Maybe the fees and organization of refueling tips the balance?

Carriers don't want to do a stop unless they're offloading and onboarding passengers, so they'd rather run one flight to the intermediary, and another direct.

Well yeah, we're talking a about WHY it's a problem for them to stop.

IIRC airframe lifetime is rated in pressurization cycles.

It adds a surprising amount of time. You have to descend, land, taxi to a fueling area, refuel, taxi, take off, climb. And that's if the local regulations allow fueling with passengers on board.

That's probably around 2 hours extra. And this in turn can require the plane to carry additional pilots and flight attendants.

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