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In March 2019, a Bombardier Global 7500 flew non-stop from Singapore to Tucson, Arizona. It covered 8,152 nautical miles in about 16 hours and, according to Bombardier, landed with healthy fuel reserves. The aircraft's published range is 7,700 nautical miles.That flight beat the brochure by more than 450 nm. With strong headwinds or a full cabin, the same aircraft can fall well short of it. Both outcomes are consistent with the published figure, because a published range is the result of one standard test case. Knowing what that case contains is the first step in judging whether a jet can fly a given route non-stop.Bombardier, Gulfstream and Dassault quote range with eight passengers, at a stated cruise speed, in still air, with NBAA IFR reserves. Those reserves cover a missed approach, a 200 nm diversion to an alternate airport and a hold. The reserve fuel is already inside the headline number.What the number leaves out is everything that varies from flight to flight: wind, routing, payload beyond eight passengers, and the fuel rules the operator flies under. All of that has to come out of one figure, the surplus of published range over route distance.Frankfurt to Singapore measures 5,551 nm on a great circle. Four large-cabin jets commonly offered for charter on long routes start with very different surpluses. The Global 7500 has about 2,150 nm to spare. The Gulfstream G650 has about 1,450 nm, the Dassault Falcon 8X about 900 nm, and the Bombardier Global 6000 about 450 nm.Wind turns those surpluses into something easier to compare. At Mach 0.85, a large-cabin jet cruises at about 484 knots true airspeed. An average headwind of 36 knots across the whole flight adds enough air distance to use up the Global 6000's surplus. The Falcon 8X can absorb about 67 knots, the G650 about 100 and the Global 7500 about 135. These figures are simplified: one speed for all four aircraft, a steady wind and a great-circle track. A real flight plan uses forecast winds at each altitude, published airways and actual weights. The figures show the scale involved. Average headwind each jet can absorb on Frankfurt to Singapore before reaching its NBAA IFR reserves. Simplified calculation; sources in chart.On this route, the scale is large. pereJets estimates the Frankfurt to Singapore leg at about 11 hours 9 minutes gate to gate. Its estimate for the return runs from 10 hours 2 minutes to 12 hours 16 minutes, depending on winds. At cruise speed, that spread of 2 hours 14 minutes is worth more than 1,000 nm of air distance, which exceeds the Falcon 8X's entire surplus.Fuel rules take another share. NBAA IFR reserves are a convention for comparing aircraft. A charter operator under European rules plans taxi, trip, contingency, alternate and final reserve fuel. Contingency is typically 5% of trip fuel, which on an 11-hour flight is about half an hour of flying, or roughly 270 nm. Many operators add margins of their own.The pereJets route model accounts for these factors with a fixed allowance of about 1,390 nm (2,570 km) beyond the route distance. On that basis, only two aircraft are planned non-stop. The Global 7500 keeps 1,410 km in hand. The G650 keeps 110 km, a margin small enough that a stronger-than-forecast headwind, a full cabin or a routing change could add a technical stop.Payload and runways are the remaining variables. The G650 and Global 7500 can seat well over eight passengers, and every extra passenger and bag reduces range. Frankfurt and Singapore Changi both have long runways, so takeoff weight is unlikely to limit fuel on this route. At shorter airports it can. British Airways ran an all-business-class A318 service from London City to New York from 2009 to 2020, and the westbound flights stopped in Shannon because the short runway limited how much fuel the aircraft could carry.The obvious way to settle the question would be to look at what actually flies the route. Public tracking data struggles with exactly these flights. pereJets analysed 252,417 business jet flights observed in open ADS-B data over 362 days. To avoid estimating missing segments, it excluded 54% of raw legs because they crossed gaps in coverage. Coverage is thin over oceans, Africa and parts of Asia, so long intercontinental trips are the flights most likely to drop out.The flights that remain are mostly short. The five most frequently observed types typically fly 78 to 99 minutes, and only one of the ten busiest routes, Toronto to Teterboro, crosses a border. Observed business jet activity is weighted toward short-haul flying, and the routes where range margin matters most are the ones tracking data captures least.That leaves the flight plan as the reliable source. For a long route, the useful figures are the surplus over the route distance, the payload it was calculated with, the operator's reserve and contingency policy, and the same figures for the return leg flying the other way.The Singapore-Tucson record and a planned fuel stop on a much shorter route can come from the same brochure figure. The difference is the surplus and the wind on the day.