1 {scene: Plane exterior in flight}
2 {scene: Pilot in cockpit, making an announcement over the PA system}
2 Pilot: Flight time from Singapore to Glasgow is 13 hours. We'll let you know the local weather when we're close to arrival.
3 {scene: A snake appears in the cockpit, sneaking up on ominously on the pilot}
3 Pilot: Until then, relax and enjoy the flight.
4 {scene change: The passenger cabin of the plane}
4 Steve: Crikey! There's a hole in my carry-on bag!

There are, in fact, as far as I can tell from my brief web searching, no direct flights from Singapore to Glasgow currently offered by any airline. The closest cities to Australia with direct flights to Glasgow are Dubai and Lahore, both of which have no direct flights from Brisbane, Australia (where Steve and Terry live).

In fact, about the only really sensible options for flying to Glasgow from Australia involve changing planes at Heathrow.

And the tiny Heathrow-Glasgow hop is not long enough for sufficient drama on board...

So I invented this flight.

The exterior shot of the plane, by the way, is a gorgeous new Lego model, very generously donated by a reader. It sure beats the makeshift job I did with the previous plane model I used.

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2018-03-25 Rerun commentary: As I write this rerun annotation, the very first non-stop commercial flight between Australia and Europe is currently in the air, having departed from Perth about 12 hours ago, and due to land in London in about another 5 and a bit hours.

It's not quite Sydney to London in a single hop - which has long been the dream air route - but it is Australia to England without a stop, and that's something quite amazing. Next time I fly to London, I am very tempted to book the route via Perth, rather than Dubai or Singapore. Because just knowing that when you board that homebound plane in London that when you get off you'll be in your own country sounds so much better than having a 4 hour layover in Asia somewhere.

A seventeen hour flight doesn't sound too bad. I semi-regularly make 14-hour flights between Sydney and the USA, and honestly they're not so bad. The real drag is flying from Australia to Europe, where it's a 14 hour flight to Dubai, then 4 hours sitting in an airport when you're dead tired and all you want to do is find a horizontal surface and sleep (and of course, you can't), then another 7 hours on a plane before you finally get to your destination.

Actually... I suddenly realised I've done a 17+ hour flight already, from Dallas to Sydney. That route is slightly shorter than Perth-London, but not by much. And yeah, it was fine.