What a delight it was to wake up this morning to the news that Qantas selects the Airbus A350-1000 for Project Sunrise! For those that don’t know, this is the plan to run non-stop flights for 20 plus hours from the east coast cities in Australia (Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane) to London and New York among others.
Regular readers will know I have covered this project for a while. I speculated that with the Boeing 777-8 being put on hold, that it may go to Airbus as Qantas don’t usually do interim lift. A couple of months ago, I pointed to the fact that Airbus was looking likely to get the order as they were commenting all about the project, while Boeing were silent. Now we know!
Qantas Selects The A350-1000 – But There’s A Catch!
As reported in the Qantas Press Release, the final decision on an order will be made in March 2020. Regulatory approval from Australia’s Civil Aviation Safety Authority (CASA) still needs to be gained in order to run flights of such a duration.
21 hours in the air makes for extremely long duty times for pilots and cabin crew. Qantas have done two of three research flights and all seems to be pointing to the fact that they will get approval.
Therefore we will need to wait a few more months to see if the aircraft order will be placed. If it does, the non-stop flights are scheduled to commence in the first half of 2023. We still have some time to wait!
Overall Thoughts
So, Qantas selects the Airbus A350-1000, but things are still in limbo. I am quietly positive that things will eventually go ahead.
For the passengers, Qantas is designing completely new first class, business class, premium economy and economy class seats. Having an area for economy class passengers to stretch and move around inflight looks likely to be included. The airline is taking the health and wellbeing of its customers very seriously and so they should. They will be long trips!
What do you think of the aircraft selection decision? Are you surprised it went to Airbus or was that your thought the entire time? Thank you for reading and if you have any comments or questions, please leave them below.
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Images via Airbus.
