A national carrier just unveiled an aircraft built to keep 238 people airborne for up to 22 hours, and called it progress. This week in Toulouse, Qantas presented the first Airbus A350-1000ULR in its livery — the jet that will fly non-stop from Sydney to London from October 2027, ending the last stopover on a route that has existed since 1947.
The scale of the bet is hard to overstate. Qantas first announced Project Sunrise in 2017. It has spent nine years, ordered 12 custom-built aircraft, and redesigned everything from cabin lighting to in-flight wellness routines, all in pursuit of a single idea: that travellers would rather sit through one very long flight than break their journey into two shorter ones.
"Today, we're taking out the last one," said Qantas Group chief executive Vanessa Hudson, referring to the final stop on a Kangaroo Route that once took four days and seven landings to complete. It is a tidy line, but it understates what the airline actually did. Qantas did not respond to existing demand. It built a market on the bet that one did not yet exist — and is about to find out whether that bet pays off.
