How a Melbourne Analyst Named 95 Airports in One Minute
When The Guardian set out to document what it takes to set a new Guinness World Record, one of the people at the centre of its reporting was Sruthy Saseendran, a Melbourne-based business analyst with…
When The Guardian set out to document what it takes to set a new Guinness World Record, one of the people at the centre of its reporting was Sruthy Saseendran, a Melbourne-based business analyst with roots in a small town near Trivandrum, Kerala. Her record is a specific and demanding one. She identified the most airports in one minute using IATA codes, naming 95 airports in 60 seconds, in a category that did not exist before she pursued it.
That last detail shaped much of the effort. Because the category was new, Guinness initially rejected her first three applications, and the approval process took about a year. Sruthy began memorising airport codes around 2023, recalling roughly 30 per minute at the start. From there she practised for about 18 months, rising around 4:30am each day to build the recall speed the record would eventually require.
The discipline sat alongside a full life rather than apart from it. Sruthy pursued the record while balancing a full-time contract role and parenting, and while facing personal and professional setbacks along the way. The result was a mark set from steady, early-morning repetition rather than a single burst of effort.
The coverage also captures where her recall now stands. Sruthy says she can recite 104 airport codes in one minute, nine more than her official record. She says she does not have plans to break another record, which places the achievement as a completed piece of work rather than the start of a series.
What the piece documents, in the end, is a precise skill built deliberately over time. Sruthy turned a specialised body of knowledge into a verified, first-of-its-kind record, and did so while carrying the ordinary demands of work and family through every early morning of practice.