Sunrise: Projecting?

That’s not to discount the importance of these Qantas Research Flights, as they are branded. Project Sunrise has been an absolute public relations coup for Qantas, and it will still be a coup whether it ends up actually happening or not.

One must ask, though, at this point, whether Qantas has gone too far to be able to pull it back if it needs to. With apologies to Shakespeare, is Qantas in Sunrise / Stepp’d in so far that, should I wade no more, / Returning were as tedious as go o’er?

The big question is around the aircraft and its performance.

The 787-9, of course, was never meant to be the Project Sunrise aircraft, and no amount of executives and journalists doing the Macarena wearing Qantas payjamas in an empty economy class cabin can fix that.

Boeing, for its part, has been briefing that its 777-8 will be ready, but details are thin and the programme remains delayed — and Boeing itself is in an unprecedented state of absolute disarray — but its present notional range of 8,730 nm was always expected to be attractive.

Enter Airbus, with its 8,700 nm-capable A350-1000 featuring a new improved maximum takeoff weight, adding an extra 3 tonnes of payload through operational and production efficiencies, but crucially not adding an extra fuel tank ULR variant to the family. New York to Sydney is 8,646 nm, but because Airbus’s range estimates work on a payload of 375-380 passengers, that isn’t cutting it too tight.

Qantas just needs to lighten the load — and that means that whether Qantas can make Project Sunrise work depends on the passenger experience: the seats, people and luggage on board.

Fundamentally, Qantas needs its seats to be the lightest weight possible. The airline says it wants new products, but its current products are already fairly light and have been continually improved since their first appearance.
In business, for example, the Thompson Vantage XL seat customised for the airline by David Caon is already in its third generation, having been installed first on the A330 fleet, then the 787-9s, then the A380. This succession is useful for many reasons, including that the airline, seatmaker and airframers get to understand where the dead weight in the product is, and where the certification requirements mean that a thinner or lighter component than originally thought can be used.
Whatever happens, expect Qantas to try to fit at least fifty fewer passengers on board than the Airbus maximum.
Almost all A350-1000 operators, beyond the low-cost and leisure brigade, seat between 320 and 340 passengers on their aircraft. With the hope of premium yields on the nonstop, the amount of business and premium economy seating is likely to continue its rise. Qantas’s refit A380 offers six more business class and 25 more premium economy seats than its previous configuration, just as an example.
In honesty, though, I wouldn’t expect to see much of the whizz-bang revolutionary stuff that’s been mooted. Qantas has a useful opportunity to mournfully wring its hands and say that the aircraft just can’t handle expansive underfloor bunks, gyms and so on — how sad, what a shame, but have you seen these moderately nice new self-service bars? And are you certain you don’t want to do the Macarena in the galley between meals?
But it’s not just the on-plane passenger experience that will drive Project Sunrise. It’s the airports too. Connecting in the United States is, on the whole, a miserable experience, especially in LAX’s multi-terminal hell.
That’s a good part of what’s driving both Qantas and Air New Zealand to expand further and further into the United States. It’s beyond the factor of “the more time you can spend on a non-American carrier on any journey, the better”. It’s the fact that you get to avoid a cross-terminal hike and transit experience.
And so, we come to what is increasingly looking like what we may end up with as the answer to the Project Sunrise question: yes and no.

A yes to the mostly in-range 8,646 nm New York, allowing passengers to avoid the terrible experience of having to connect at a US airport. But perhaps a no in the out-of-range 9,177 nm London, where connections on either Qantas over Perth — where airport relationships remain a spoiler — or partner Emirates over Dubai are substantially less painful.

‘The width doesn’t just mean that there’s more elbow room for seating’