Tony and Cherie Blair at Melbourne airport. (AFP)

London, March 25: Tony Blair and his wife Cherie have arrived in Melbourne after a record-breaking flight across the world.

Their chartered British Airways 777 jet registered the longest non-stop passenger flight by any aircraft, taking 18 hours and 55 minutes to make the 9,200 nautical mile journey from Brussels to Australia.

The trip was longer than the record-breaking scheduled flight, by Singapore Airlines, from Singapore to New York, an 18 and a half hour, 8,900 nautical mile journey. Blair’s plane had 50 passengers, 12 cabin crew, five BA support staff and four pilots.

Aviation expert David Learmount said: “It’s done a longer journey than anyone can make by buying a ticket on a scheduled airliner ? but it couldn’t do it with a full payload of passengers. It’s a similar duration and distance to the Singapore-New York flight, and Singapore Airlines providing that as a scheduled service is a more impressive achievement, in my view. They do it by using the Airbus 340-500 aircraft, which is designed for extreme range.”

Blair will make the second of three key speeches on terrorism, Iraq and Afghanistan in an address to Australia’s parliament on Monday, after attending the closing ceremony for the Commonwealth Games in Melbourne on Sunday. Anti-Iraq war protesters are planning a rally outside parliament for Blair's visit. Australia was one of the first nations to commit troops to join US and British forces in the invasion of Iraq.