How to think, not feel about Qantas's Project Sunrise
Project Sunrise, the much vaunted strategy by Qantas to fly non-stop from the eastern seaboard of Australian to London and New York finally looks like coming to fruition in 2027. First announced in 2017, and originally slated to start in 2022, the first A350-1000ULR that Qantas acquired for Project Sunrise will arrive in late 2026. The first Project Sunrise flight - presumably Sydney to London - will likely take place at the start of NS27 season in March 2027.
Many observers initially labeled Project Sunrise a publicity stunt. Even Cam Wallace, currently the CEO of Qantas International but then an executive at Air New Zealand, initially wrote it off as one. Qantas are very, very good at PR, so it’s easy to be cynical about it. However, recent history has shown Qantas’s ambitions to push the envelope on ultra long haul (ULH) flying. In the last decade, Qantas have launched several new ULH routes, each significantly longer than their previously longest flight from Los Angeles to Melbourne. Qantas’s push into ULH flying was enabled by their acquisition of the B787-9 that allowed them to extend flight times by nearly two hours.
Route Distance Block* Start
PER-LHR 7829nm 17:50 2018
DFW-MEL 7814nm 17:40 2022
PER-CDG 7702nm 17:30 2024
JFK-AKL 7671nm 17:40 2023
DFW-SYD 7454nm 17:25 2014**
PER-FCO 7211nm 16:25 2022
LAX-MEL 6883nm 15:55
* Block time of longest/westbound leg.
** Prior to 2014, westbound leg was operated via BNE.In some respects, it’s not surprising to see Qantas pushing the envelop once again. We wanted to understand why they’re doing this? What’s motivating them in pushing block times to 21 or 22 hours that’ll be required for the westbound Sydney-London sector?
We’re not interested in how people feel about it, rather we’re interested in cutting through the nostalgia, resistance to change and spin, to understand the strategy and economics behind it. There’s a lot more nuance than meets the eye, so we wanted to challenge some of the simplistic narratives and understand the costs and risks involved, and the prize.
This analysis is very long, so apologies in advance, but there are a range of factors, and a whole lot of history that needs to be understood to help us reach an incredibly provocative conclusion: the tyranny of distance and the inability to compete on cost with one-stop carriers means they don’t have much of a choice other than a “deal with the devil”!