Project Sunrise

In recent years Joyce has spoken publicly with increasing regularity about his desire to fly nonstop from Sydney to New York (8,650nm via the great circle route in still air) and Sydney to London (9,200nm). Now he has effectively committed his airline to doing just that, announcing Project Sunrise, Qantas’s ambition to fly nonstop from the east coast of Australia to two of the world’s major economic and cultural centres from 2022.

Despite Sydney-London being almost 1,000 miles more distant that the world’s longest nonstop regular airline service to date, Singapore Airline’s Airbus A340‑500 flights between Singapore and Newark, New Jersey, the flight is technically feasible. As they are currently designed, the Airbus A350‑900ULR and the Boeing 777‑8X come pretty close to being able to do the mission (indeed Airbus plans to introduce nonstop A350ULR flights between Singapore and New York – whether that is Newark or New York JFK is unclear – from 2018.)

So lightly-loaded both types would have the legs for Sydney- London.

But the key challenge is what does an economically-viable payload look like to justify such monstrously-long 21 hour flights (where you have to carry fuel to carry fuel).

SIA is thought to be specing its A350ULRs with around 170-seats in two classes (business and premium economy), whereas Qantas is believed to be looking for a payload of 300-seats while flying over 900 miles further. (Officially Qantas says its wants a “full passenger load”.)

So then there is the question of how much development work both aircraft types would require to fly 10,000nm – auxiliary fuel tanks, new pumps and plumbing, lighter weight components, more efficient Engines?

The greater the technical changes that need to be made, the greater the development and certification costs that will be incurred. And those are costs that the manufacturers would look to recover off a small number of orders for what would very much be a niche aircraft subtype, one that very few other airlines would have a need to operate.

There’s a delicate balance here. Qantas should be able to charge a 15-20 per cent premium on tickets for nonstop flights to London and New York versus current onestop itineraries, but that premium needs to be more than enough to justify the premium acquisition cost the new aircraft will likely command. And that premium in the purchase price will be driven by how much further development the A350ULR and 777-8X require over their baseline standards to deliver on Qantas’s payload Requirements.

But it’s likely even Qantas will look to acquire more than the half-a-dozen or so ultra longhaul jets it would need for daily Sydney-London and Sydney-New York flights, as both aircraft types would open up a range of other nonstop options – Melbourne and Brisbane to London nonstops, Sydney nonstop to Chicago, Toronto and even Rio de Janiero. (Sydney-Rio is ‘only’ 7,310nm, but the great circle route flies over the top of Antarctica.)

And beyond that, whichever new type Qantas selects under Project Sunrise – the name is a nod to the ‘Double Sunrise’ flights Qantas operated nonstop between Perth and Sri Lanka using Catalinas in WW2 – it seems likely to form part of a larger fleet Type.

Both the A350 and 777X families present interesting options for Qantas as it looks to replace its widebody fleet, the 777-9X could replace A380s and 747‑400ERs for example, the A350-900 could replace A330s (if the 787-9 is not already pencilled in for that). So the carrot Qantas is dangling in front of Airbus and Boeing is potentially quite a bit larger than an initial half a dozen aircraft.

But is the prospect of nonstop 20+ hour flights a juicy carrot to dangle in front of Qantas’s passengers? For time-sensitive business travellers (in business class!) who value convenience, most definitely. For business and high-end leisure travellers in premium economy, probably. But regular economy? (And a 300-seat configuration certainly suggests no matter how ‘premium-heavy’ the cabins in the ultra long-haul jets will be, they will certainly have a decent-sized economy cabin.)

Still, even for economy class passengers it’s hard to disagree with Alan Joyce’s claim that such nonstop flights would be “revolutionary”, even if they are still five years away from reality. And the fact that those flights are five years away shows some welcome long-term thinking in an industry too often focused on the short term and the next crisis in front of it. That’s testament to Qantas’s financial strength and health at the moment, and a welcome echo of its pioneering past.