Airship Guide

[Proxie]

The Monster Trainer - Near maximum Speed, high Survey, low Retrieval, minimum Hull
Hitting just SC24 should take about 26 hours and 46 minutes.

As far as I remember it's 26 hours and 53 minutes =) Not that it really matters

[Nyalia]

As far as I remember it's 26 hours and 53 minutes =) Not that it really matters

Though they sounded precise, my numbers were an estimate created with the trip planner tool on the airship log spreadsheets. Since I don't have exact coordinates for sector 24, I had to use the rounded distance numbers the game displays. The formula we're using is exact, but internally, the distances between two sectors aren't whole numbers for calculating trip times. So, instead of it being "28" away from the Home sector, SC24 is actually more like 28.1 away. But, as you say, it doesn't really matter - the numbers are close enough, and the relative difference between the 150 speed and 154 speed builds should be the same (about 30 minutes).

I'm not having very much luck opening the new sectors (23 and 24). Any hints?

Increase your speed. Having a Tatanora and/or Viltgance rigging is really nice for when you want to discover new sectors or get small numbers of specific drops. Also, hit both sectors with all ships that can. It's not super-efficient as far as time goes, but it's more efficient (imo) than hitting other sectors. Do home -> 21 -> 19, of course, because it's shorter than the other way around. Give up on getting other items for now and just have all four ships hit those two sectors. When our FC did it, we unlocked both at once with the second ship and obtained total junk with all four, wasting two days of airship ventures. But, not really wasting, 'cause we got both unlocks.