bovine

One of the pilots from this test flight even remarked, "As a matter of fact - we didn't even top off the fuel tanks."

The entire path is communicated to ATC in advance when the flight plan is filed, so they can foresee the route on screen when directing other traffic. Also, much of the flight was in the evening and late night, so traffic controlling load would have been lower for them.

It's great to see them do something interesting while they're already in the air burning time/fuel on the new engine testing. The test flight would have occurred for the same duration regardless of the path. They needed a flight that was about 19 hours long for extended operation certification purposes.

Awesome! It's great to see them do something interesting while they're already in the air burning time/fuel on the new engine testing.