World's largest one-stop flights still dominated by Emirates and Qantas Airbus A380s

Emirates has maintained service to Christchurch since July 2004 with various aircraft types including the A340-500 and 777-300ER before deploying the A380 in October 2016. The current four-class configuration was introduced in March 2023 and continues today. The upper deck offers 14 first class suites and 76 business class seats, while the main deck includes 56 premium economy seats and 338 economy seats.

Historically, Emirates’ route from Dubai to Christchurch has changed over time. Between July 2004 and July 2005, it operated as a one-stop service via Melbourne using an A340. From then until January 2009, stops were made in Sydney before switching to a routing through Bangkok and Sydney on the Boeing 777 until October 2016. Since then, one-stop service via Sydney resumed exclusively on the A380.

Looking back at September 2019—the last pre-pandemic September—the same four routes used large-capacity aircraft exceeding 450 seats. Other examples included Corsair’s Paris Orly-St. Denis-Mauritius link on a Boeing 747-400 and Air France’s brief Paris CDG-Punta Cana-Santo Domingo service on a Boeing 777-300ER. Qantas previously flew Sydney-New York JFK via Los Angeles with large aircraft until this ended in 2020; it now serves JFK via Auckland using smaller Boeing 787-9s.

Singapore Airlines once operated an A380 between Singapore and JFK via Frankfurt but used a configuration just below the size threshold at that time; more recent configurations have increased seat count but are no longer used on this route.

"Some of Emirates' configs have almost no difference in their overall capacity, even as few as one or two seats. It can be nearly meaningless. Given this, the scheduled number of seats per flight (summarized below) may vary somewhat in real-world operations."

"The double-decker quadjet first appeared in October 2016, with the four-class config flown from March 2023. It continues to be used today."