Hamburg: Qantas’ boss has said that planes could reach London from Sydney via the Arctic if necessary, emphasising the scale of long-haul flights to be offered by the airline’s ambitious Project Sunrise.
The purpose-built Airbus A350-1000 ULR model, now expected to enter service in 2027, will have the capacity to reach London and New York from Sydney non-stop, according to CEO Vanessa Hudson.
An Airbus A350-1000 flight test aircraft lands at Sydney in 2022. Twelve Airbus A350-1000s will be ordered to operate non-stop Project Sunrise flights from Australia’s east coast to New York, London and other destinations.Credit: James D. Morgan
“At some time of the year, the fastest way to get from Sydney to London will be over Japan and over the North Pole and down the other side, because of the wind direction,” Hudson said in a recent round of media interviews, on the sidelines of the Airbus Summit in Toulouse, France.
Typical long-haul flights from Australia to London fly legs up into South-East Asia before crossing the Middle East and Eastern Europe to reach Europe.
The extraordinary range of the Airbus A350-1000 ULR – for “ultra-long range” – will give Qantas passengers the ability to skip time-consuming stops at hubs and fly from Australia to any point on the globe directly. The economics of the A350-1000 ULR expands the range of route options, allowing it to avoid paths complicated by closed airspace, in favour of paths over the North Pole, Hudson said in comments on The Independent travel podcast.
These capabilities come as conflict in Eastern Europe and the Middle East has forced costly changes to flight routes. Following Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, democracies placed a flurry of sanctions on Moscow, which retaliated by blocking countries from using its airspace. European carriers now have to add one to three hours to their Asia flights to avoid flying over Russia.
Director-general of Association of Asia Pacific Airlines Subhas Menon said airlines in the region faced challenges crossing geopolitically unstable nations towards destinations in the northern hemisphere. “It creates a lot of unpredictability and additional cost.”
Qantas first-class cabins for the Project Sunrise flights will come with a 60 centimetre-wide reclining seat and separate two metre-long bed.
When Project Sunrise starts, the A350s will carry 238 passengers across four classes – first, business, premium economy and economy. In a sign of shifting consumer demand, more than 40 per cent of the cabin will be dedicated to premium seating. A more sparsely configured cabin – to accommodate expanded premium areas – will lighten the plane’s weight, permitting it to fly more efficiently for longer.
Fully customisable lighting sequence: The new Qantas first-class suite planned for its A350 flights.
“We’re hearing from our customers a greater desire to go point-to-point,” Hudson said at the Airbus factory in Hamburg. “And doing that in a premium and a comfortable seat is also something that customers are saying that they value, and they’re prepared to pay a premium for.”
The premium could be 20 per cent more than existing Qantas long-haul flights, she said. The premium experience comes with features designed to attract higher-paying customers.
The coming A350s’ first-class cabins will have a “fully customisable lighting sequence” so “customers can choose the time zone they want to be on for the duration of the flight” – effectively easing their jet lag. The Airbus will have a more spacious layout with wider cabins and larger windows, all engineered with the experience of a 20-plus hour-long flight in mind.
Qantas’ Project Sunrise takes its name from so-called “Double Sunrise” flights across the Indian Ocean by Qantas pilots during World War II. They remained airborne long enough to see two sunrises while crossing the Indian Ocean.
Hudson told reporters in Hamburg that the first A350 is due to arrive with Qantas in 2026. The fleet, slated to grow to 12, will need at least three planes before the Sydney to London or Sydney to New York non-stop service can begin. Once delivered to Qantas, the planes will need certification from CASA before they can fly commercially. And even then, Qantas will take a phased approach to their rollout.
“Given that this aircraft is going to be flying such a long distance, we’ll be doing lots of training with our pilots and our cabin crew,” Hudson said. “To do that, we will have that first aircraft, probably flying on the Tasman to New Zealand, where it gives us a little bit of time to stretch its legs, but not too far.”
Hudson said Project Sunrise would actually start in the first half of 2027 when Qantas gets the three aircraft and “then build from there”. Manufacturing delays have stretched out the timeline for delivery of the A350s before. In 2022, Qantas said the A350-1000 ULR would be in service in 2025. The after-effects of the pandemic disruptions on industry, as well as design changes requested by regulators have added to the delay.
University of Sydney professor Rico Merkert, who studies supply chains and transportation, said it would not be a “good look” for Qantas if they had to push the timeline out further for the delivery of the A350.
For Airbus, it’s less problematic, he said, because at the moment “every airline on the planet is trying to get new planes” to save money on operating costs and lower emissions. The easiest way to do both was to renew fleets, he said.
Initial flights across the Tasman “make sense”, Merkert said, because “safety is of paramount importance” with the plane’s new technological underpinnings. “Safety is also part of the Qantas brand.”
For Qantas, the addition of the A350s was expected to have a cascading effect on Qantas’ international fleet, freeing up other aircraft to fly “point to point” into the US, Hudson said, a capability similar to the narrow-body Airbus 321XLRs entering Qantas service in June, albeit with a much longer range.
Eventually, Project Sunrise flights could connect Perth and London or Melbourne and Dallas, “potentially” Sydney and Dallas, Hudson said.
That’s going to help free up Boeing 787s, which can then fly into other markets.
“Chicago would be great. Seattle would be great, seasonally into Las Vegas … would be amazing,” Hudson mused. “Anywhere from Perth into other points, into Europe would also be considered.
“When we get to that point, we will assess all of those ports, and we’ll focus the aircraft on the ones that we think will generate the best outcome for customers and our business.”
Qantas CEO Vanessa Hudson aboard the unfinished Airbus 321XLR which Qantas will soon take delivery of.Credit: Airbus
Qantas chief financial officer Rob Marcolina said that the evolution of technology underpinning the new A350s enabled Qantas to invert what had long been Australia’s geographical burden of distance.
The A380 put pressure on Qantas in the early 2010s, when airlines such as Singapore, Qatar and Etihad started using middle-point destinations in the Middle East and Singapore to put more seat capacity in Australia.
“With Sunrise, we can fly over the top of them,” Marcolina said. “So our geographic disadvantage is actually our advantage in the sense that these aircraft have the ability to fly to anywhere around the world.”
Not only does Sunrise bank on Australian demand for premium, super-long flights, it created an opportunity to draw North American customers on a direct flight into Australia which would be “massive”, he said.
The unique positioning of the Sunrise flights will demonstrate Qantas’s role as a national carrier “on the global scale”.
“Technology is enabling us to do that,” he said.
Chris Zappone travelled to Hamburg as a guest of Airbus and Qantas.
The Business Briefing newsletter delivers major stories, exclusive coverage and expert opinion. Sign up to get it every weekday morning.