Imagine getting on a plane in Sydney and getting off directly in London, with no stopovers, no gate changes, no waiting at an airport halfway. A journey of around 17,000 kilometers in around 22 hours. It sounds like science fiction, but within the next year the longest non-stop flight in the world could become reality: Qantas, the Australian national airline, has announced that its Airbus A350-1000ULR will inaugurate the direct Sydney-London connection in October 2027, breaking every distance record in commercial aviation and canceling the last remaining stopover, on a route that once required seven.
It is the goal of Project Sunrise, the program that for almost a decade has been pursuing an objective considered unachievable: to bring passengers from the east coast of Australia to the United Kingdom with a single flight. At the moment, however, the record still remains in the hands of the scheduled flight connecting Singapore and New York, for a total duration of approximately 18 hours.
Qantas and the longest non-stop flight ever
As anticipated, Qantas has officially announced the launch of flights between Sydney and London as part of its “Project Sunrise”, a plan born in 2017 with a seemingly impossible goal: directly connecting the Australian east coast with London and New York, without stopovers. Tickets will go on sale from February 2027 and the flight will operate on a daily basis. Compared to the current connections with an airport, up to four hours of travel will be saved, quite a bit considering that we are talking about one of the longest routes on the planet. The project was not born overnight: there were years of development behind it, delays caused by the pandemic and enormous engineering challenges. But now the first plane has been unveiled in official livery at the Airbus factory in Toulouse.
This air route is what Australians have always called the “Kangaroo Route”: it is the route between Sydney and London, a journey that for decades has represented the connection between Australia and the rest of the world. The first time Qantas traveled it was 1947, and to get to London it took four whole days, with 7 intermediate stops: Darwin, Singapore, Calcutta, Karachi, Cairo, Castel Benito and Rome. Each generation of aircraft has progressively eliminated a stop. Today the journey takes about 24 hours with just one stopover, usually in Singapore or Dubai.
The plane that will make direct travel from Sydney to London possible: A350-1000ULR
Until a few years ago, a direct flight between Sydney and London would not have been technically feasible. No commercial aircraft in production had sufficient range to cover these specific distances. Airbus therefore developed a specially modified variant of its A350 model (one of the best-selling aircraft for long-haul routes): the A350-1000ULR, where ULR stands for Ultra Long Range.
The key modification is relatively simple to describe, but technically complex to implement: the addition of an additional rear central tank (called Rear Center Tank) which brings on board an extra 20,000 liters of fuel, increasing the aircraft’s range by approximately 1,850 kilometers compared to the basic version. This is enough to put Sydney-London and Sydney-New York within safe operating limits.
Qantas has ordered 12 examples of this aircraft, each of which will be named after a star. The first is called “Vega” and will be delivered in April 2027. To operate a daily route you need at least three planes (two in flight, one in reserve): the service to London will start as soon as Qantas has received enough of them. There are only 238 seats, well less than half the maximum certified capacity of the A350-1000, to ensure greater comfort on board. The configuration includes 6 first class suites, 52 seats in business, 40 in premium economy and 140 in economy.
