Qantas CEO Alan Joyce bullish on Project Sunrise in comments today

Alan Joyce is the Irish CEO of Australia’s Qantas and today was interviewed on Eurocontrol’s Aviation StraightTalk Live. During the discussion, he made some bullish comments about Project Sunrise.

This project is the business case around non-stop flights from Australia’s east coast cities of Brisbane, Sydney and Melbourne to places such as London and New York. These will be the longest flights in the world when they begin.

Project Sunrise To Date

The Qantas CEO firmly believes that passengers will continue to have an appetite for point to point travel post-pandemic. He believes the pandemic has made it even more attractive than before.

When it comes to Project Sunrise, we already know the Australian airline selected the Airbus A350-1000 for the flights. The pilots have also agreed, with 86% voting for the new Enterprise Bargaining Agreement (the contract for pay and conditions). In addition, the on board product had been designed as well.

In March 2020, Qantas was a few weeks away from placing the order, which would have seen services commence in 2023. The pandemic hit and the pause button was firmly pressed.

They are now planning to revisit Project Sunrise during this year, with a view to services commencing from 2024 onwards. How can they justify such long flights though?

Bullish Comments On The Future

One thing that helped the business case was the non-stop flights from Perth to London. These are operated on 236 seat Boeing 787-9 Dreamliners and are the longest flight in the Qantas network. They are also the most profitable AND have the highest customer satisfaction.

A similarly spacious layout is planned for the A350-1000s, as they will be in the air for up to 21 hours. The destinations mentioned for these flights are London, Paris, Frankfurt, New York, Chicago, Rio de Janeiro and Cape Town.

Qantas are bullish as they see it as a unique opportunity in that they will be able to have a fleet size of a significant number of aircraft that makes it economically viable. By comparison, if British Airways, Lufthansa or American Airlines wanted to compete, they would only need two or three aircraft for flights to Australia, making them an expensive sub-fleet in their overall fleet mix, which is not economically viable.

This means Qantas will have a sustainable economic advantage over the competition that no-one else can emulate. They are bullish about this and believe it will be one of the big things over the next decade.

Overall Thoughts

Alan Joyce is one of the airline CEOs that has done a superb job in running an airline. He credits a lot of that to the education he received at Aer Lingus when he worked there, saying he had about four different roles there and learned a lot.

I’m firmly in the camp that believe the flights will go ahead and more importantly will be a success. He is also correct when it comes to the competition, though anything could happen in that area.

What do you think, is Qantas right to be bullish about this, or not? Thank you for reading and if you have any comments or questions, please leave them below.

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Featured image by Vismay Bhadra via Wikimedia Commons.