It ‘s called Project Sunrise . The name may seem pretentious or straight out of a 007 movie script, when the villain of the story explains his plan for world domination. For this initiative, the Australian company Qantas has chosen a very appropriate name, as it will be one of its most ambitious projects in its more than 100-year history: to unite London and Sydney by direct flight .
Flying non-stop between the British capital and the main city in Australia (and all of Oceania) is something new and highly desired by passengers who have historically been accustomed to making intermediate stops. The airline has been mulling over how to do it for years and already has plans to carry out these ultra-long flights: it will be in mid-2026.
Six scales
The real start of Project Sunrise flights will take place almost 80 years after Qantas’ first flight from Sydney to London. It was on 1 December 1947 when an Australian Lockheed Constellation took off from Kingsford Smith Airport bound for Great Britain with 40 people on board: 29 passengers and 11 crew.
The range of the four-engine plane meant that it had to make six stops along the way: Darwin (still in Australia), Singapore, Calcutta (India), Karachi (Pakistan), Cairo (Egypt) and Tripoli (Libya), before finally arriving in London. To ensure that the journey was not exhausting and that the stops were not merely to refuel the plane and its occupants with food and drink, during the stopovers in Singapore and Cairo, the passengers slept in hotels, while the crews took turns and changed at the different stops on the long route.
Jet
The replacement of propeller planes with jets from 1959 onwards with the introduction of the Boeing 707 significantly changed the way people flew. Thanks to the speed, the halo of expensive air travel with many stopovers was left behind, although it was still impossible to get directly between the two points, so Qantas jets continued to fly via various airports in Asia. There were even offers to fly to the United Kingdom via the opposite route, via Fiji, Tahiti, Acapulco, Mexico City, the Bahamas and Bermuda. This route was christened ‘Fiesta’.
With the progressive improvements in aircraft and their range, we have reached the present moment in which, thanks to the range of the new generation jets, to fly between both cities only one stop is necessary: Singapore, so the QF1 flight, currently operated with Airbus A380s, lasts about 24 hours, including the stop in the city-state and in the opposite direction, like QF2, it lasts one hour less, also stopping at Changi Airport.
Just because there are no flights between the two cities doesn’t mean that Qantas doesn’t have a non-stop service between the two countries. Since 2019, there have been flights from London to Perth, the city at the opposite end of the country to Sydney.
2019
The same year that the Heathrow-Perth flight was launched, Project Sunrise was already underway: Qantas scheduled three research and test flights to collect data and present it to the Australian Civil Aviation Authority, which required proof that pilots, cabin crew and passengers could handle up to 22 hours in the air.
During these test flights, pilots wore brainwave monitors and underwent urine tests in the weeks before and after flights to track their levels of melatonin, the hormone that controls sleep cycles. In the main cabin, crew and passengers wore monitoring devices, allowing scientists to study how their health, well-being and biological clock were affected by a range of variables including lighting, food and drink, movement, sleep patterns and even in-flight entertainment.
Everything was in place, including the choice of aircraft for ultra-long flights: Airbus had overtaken Boeing, to the chagrin of the Americans, as it was not just a matter of selling aircraft, but of doing so for a pioneering project, with the reputation that this brings to a manufacturer.
But then… Covid came along and aviation came to a screeching halt, with Australia especially locked in on international travel. The subsequent recovery of flights coincided with the initial proposed launch dates for those trips, although everything was postponed for logical reasons: it was not the right time and the planes had not arrived. Sunrise was put on hold… but not forgotten.
Back
Two years ago, in 2022, Qantas announced that it would order a dozen Airbus A350s of the 1000 series for its project, as in addition to London-Heathrow, it also wants to directly link Sydney with another world-class airport: New York-JFK. A few months after the announcement of the model, it was revealed what it would look like inside.
The planned configuration of the new A350s was announced back in 2023. The main feature is the number of seats. While an A350-1000 can carry a maximum of 480 passengers, and in three-class commercial configurations, airlines choose to fit between 350 and 410 seats in three classes, Qantas has decided to fit only 238 to offer much more space to travellers on these exceptionally long flights.
The aircraft will have four classes. These include a first class of six seats in a 1-1-1 configuration. There will be 52 business class seats in 1-2-1, 40 premium economy seats in 2-4-2 and 140 economy class seats in blocks of 3-3-3.
The first-class seats, marketed as First Suites, will feature an extra-wide fixed bed, a 56-centimeter-wide recliner, a full-length wardrobe, a folding dining table large enough for two people and a 32-inch high-definition television.
Business class suites will feature 63-centimetre-wide seats that can be reclined into a six-foot bed. They will also include a padded leather ottoman, a large mirror, generous storage space and an 18-inch ultra-high-definition touchscreen TV.
All Business and First class suites will have panels and a sliding door for added privacy. As is the case on all next-generation aircraft, they will also have multiple charging options for personal devices, including a wireless induction charging pad.
The economy class seats will be two and a half centimetres longer than those fitted to the rest of the fleet (in aviation, every centimetre is precious), giving travellers in this cabin 84 centimetres of legroom. In the background, the entire cabin will have WiFi and Bluetooth included. The difference between the seats in the most privileged classes and those in economy class is intended to be compensated for by so-called ‘wellness zones’. These are spaces with television screens that will guide travellers through stretching exercises and bars to help them maintain balance during super flights.
The well-being of cabin crew and pilots is not left up in the air either, as they have their own spaces, which, like small communal cabins, will be used to establish shifts for total rest, even though the planes will be constantly crossing time zones. This has also been taken into account when planning the catering that will be served on board, which not only has to be of quality, but also take into account the atmosphere of the plane and the hours spent on board: hydration, freshness and healthy food will be the key to these flights in terms of gastronomy, in addition to permanent self-service fruit, drinks and other products.
And when will they be?
The Sunrise Project was born in 2017 and the aim was to have it up and running in five years. As we have said, the global health crisis postponed everything and with the order of the dozen aircraft in 2022, it was intended to have everything ready by the end of 2025 for the two lines: London and New York from Sydney. However, the delays in the deliveries of the A350 -1000 series have delayed its launch by six months, so in mid-2026 (winter in Australia and summer in the northern hemisphere) Qantas will take the record for the longest regular flights from Singapore Airlines and beat a new challenge: flying to the antipodes non-stop with a trip that, according to the winds, will always be around 20 hours in the sky.
