New Route: The World's Most Painful Boeing 737 Flight?

On December 16th, six weeks later than originally planned, the rarely-discussed carrier known as Boliviana took off from Santa Cruz to Washington Dulles. Operated by a 737-800, flights refuel in Panama City in both directions. The 40-minute stop in Panama City brings the maximum block time to 10 hours and 10 minutes, a rather long time to spend on board a narrowbody. But let's take a look at the details of this new and obscure route for today's video. Bolivia's national airline deploys the all-economy Boeing 737-800 to Dulles. The route covers a whopping 3,655 nautical miles or 6,769 kilometers each way. That's 30% more distance than another new 737-operated route that began somewhat recently. It's even longer than Kuala Lumpur-Perth-Auckland, on which Batik Air Malaysia previously flew the MAX 8. However, it's not quite the distance of SCAT's Prague-Bishkek-Sanya MAX operation. Until now, BOA has only flown to Miami, but its US network has doubled. Of course, the new Dulles flights exist to serve the tens of thousands of Bolivians and Bolivian-Americans who reside within the greater Washington, D.C. area, home to 35,000-plus people with this ethnic background. When extended to include all of Virginia and Maryland, some say it rises to over 150,000. Yet the figures don't equate to traffic. According to booking data for the 12 months to October 2025, D.C. Santa Cruz only had 24,000 round-trip passengers. Despite this, it was the US's second-largest market to Santa Cruz, behind only Miami at 84,000. D.C.'s traffic volume was not that much for such a long service, but BOA will capture some traffic heading to other cities in South America. The catch is that it only runs twice weekly for a limited time. Its operation only exists through the festive and New Year period to January 8th. So by the time you see this video, it will almost be finished. Thankfully for the airline, the route hasn't had many seats to fill. However, advanced bookings might not have been great, as the operating window has shortened on at least two occasions. In the latest iteration, the final departure changed dramatically from the end of February to early January. For now, at least, the route will return in June for the peak summer. According to Flightradar24, the inaugural round-trip service deployed the airframe registered C-P3204, which is a 16.9-year-old 737-800. CH Aviation shows that it has 168 all-economy seats, just like the airline's other 737-800s. Despite having seven frames, only four appear to be operational. Again, the 40-minute stop in Panama City brings the maximum block time to 10 hours and 10 minutes. That might not be disastrous per se, and we'd love to fly it for the adventure and for being so different. We also wouldn't mind experiencing Oman Air's new Copenhagen offering for the same reason, which again has a stopover in the Iraqi capital. But what do you think of these obscure services? Would you ever give them a try just because? Let us know by leaving a comment.