A sort of steady one-upmanship here in the aviation world.

Who has the longest commercial flight in the world?

At the moment, it’s Dallas-Forth Worth to Sydney, at 16 hours and 55 minutes.

By February 2016, it will be Dubai to Panama City, at 17 hours and 30 minutes.

But not long after that … we could have one of more than 18 hours, from Singapore to Newark, New Jersey.

If it seems like a race is on to find the longest flight … well, I would agree with that.

Some background.

I have become interested in this since Etihad, the Abu Dhabi-based airline, began flying nonstop to Los Angeles. That one is 16 hours and 30 minutes, 7,291, ranking third for world’s longest nonstop flight listings, behind Dallas to Sydney and Atlanta to Cape Town.

I have flown both directions on the LAX-AUH run, and it is long. Mighty long. But it also is the fastest way between those two points. If you can stand it.

It seems unnatural that planes can stay up that long, especially for those of us old enough to remember when, say, a 727 starting in Los Angeles might stop in Salina, Kansas, to gas up before continuing on to points further east.

But the Boeing 777, in particular, can blow right past Salina … and Chicago and New York and keep on going till it lands in the capital of the UAE.

The 777 was built to conserve fuel — and fly longer distances.

Now, Emirates, the Dubai airline, last week announced its plan to move into the No. 1 position with its nonstop to Panama City, which covers 8,590 miles in 17 hours and 35 minutes.

The story in The National, linked in the paragraph above, quotes the top guy at Emirates suggesting this is a business move, a door into Central America, etc.

I think it’s about having the longest flight, which is a cool designation.

But Emirates may not keep its “longest” designation long.

Singapore Airlines is working with Airbus, the European jet manufacturer, to resume its Newark-to-Singapore route, which takes more than 18 hours and covers 9,535 miles, using a variant of the A350.

Airbus is looking at lightening the load and perhaps reducing the number of seats, along with Airbus figuring out how to get more miles.

What’s next? We need to get out the globe and stare at it, and maybe extend one of the current flights. How about Dubai to Quito? Or Newark to Jakarta?

If we can dream ’em up, some airline executive seems likely to put them on the schedule.

Especially when the Boeing 777 can do more than 10,500 — if everybody packs light.