On Fri, 17 Sep 2004 at 21:06:14 in message
, Roy Smith
wrote:

San Francisco to Tokyo (a relatively short run by Pacific standards) is
8276 km. Los Angeles to Tokyo is 8815 km. Could they have made those?

Yes is the answer. One stop to Tokyo and two stops to Australia. How
passengers would have felt about a two stop Pacific flight I don't
pretend to know, even if the total flight time was almost halved.

Concorde route times were claimed as San Francisco to Sydney 9:05
compared to the then estimated subsonic time of 17:40. I presume (trying
to be fair) that would be a one stop flight. Later variations of the 747
would of course do it in a single hop.
--
David CL Francis