Will Melbourne miss out on Qantas Project Sunrise flights?

Qantas has committed the first six of its globe-striding Airbus A350-1000ULR jets to Sydney-London and Sydney-New York flights, due to launch from October 2027.

But the next six in that initial order of 12 aircraft – which will arrive from early 2028 through to late 2029 – aren’t locked in to giving Melbourne the same non-stop services.

Instead, with the flow of new twin-aisle aircraft still constrained and demand for international travel continuing to soar, Qantas appears to be pivoting on Project Sunrise.

Qantas now sees a role for the A350s as supplementing the existing long-range international network and freeing up its Boeing 787s.

The airline’s longest route to date – the popular Perth-London service – is considered a prime candidate for the A350.

“At the moment the planning assumption is six will be dedicated to these ultra-long haul routes, and six will then be used across the rest of the network,” Qantas Group CEO Vanessa Hudson told a media briefing at Airbus HQ in Toulouse, France, to mark the inaugural announcement.

How Qantas has pivoted on Project Sunrise.

A slide in airline’s presentation on the investment case for Project Sunrise calls out six A350-1000ULRs being designated for “new point-to-point Ultra Long Haul”, and six for “network diversification.”

“We’ve actually got some pretty long range flying now — Perth–London and Auckland–JFK — and the plan is to use the A350s on some of those routes,” Hudson confirmed.

“That’ll then free up the 787s, enabling us to expand the network more broadly.”

This doesn’t rule out a non-stop Project Sunrise route from Melbourne or even Brisbane, but that would hinge on demand.

“It’s really important that as we start Sydney to London, we really hope that it’s going to actually stimulate demand for more of these services out of other ports.”

“And we will be responsive to that demand and we will be filling out those routes over time.”

Qantas CEO Vanessa Hudson with the airline's first A350-1000ULR.

Hudson stressed that “the A350 is going to be an aircraft that serves Melbourne, because we know that's an incredibly important market and premium market for us.”

However, she didn’t specify where the A350 would fly to – it could take over from the Boeing 787 on flights to Dallas-Fort Worth, for example, or even to LAX.

The Perth-London A350

The prospect of swapping Perth-London from a Boeing 787 to the Airbus A350 will bring first class to what is now Qantas’ longest flight, at almost 18 hours.

More notably, the A350 skews towards a higher-revenue mix of passengers, with over 40% of its 238 seats in premium cabins.

Perth looks set to see Qantas' new A350 first class.

So although the Qantas A350 has only two seats more than the Boeing 787, the newer jet would swell the number of in-demand business class and premium economy seats by 30%, while slashing the number of economy seats by 10%.

“What we’ve said is that we do want a daily service from Sydney–New York (and) Sydney–London”, Qantas Group CFO Rob Marcolina remarked during an separate briefing.

However, the airline’s business case “at the moment… is that we will use the A350 on existing routes”, he said, citing Perth-London as an example.

“We can then redeploy that 789 into another market, so that creates growth for the business.”

Up next: Athens, Chicago, Seattle?

So where would these newly-available Boeing 787s be headed?

Hudson has a list of "exciting destinations that we’d want to fly to.”

The 787s could “unlock” the airline’s desire for an “East Coast–Chicago” route – one that it almost launched in April 2020, before the global pandemic took over.

“Potentially there are other points in North America, in Canada, in South America.”

Perth could also see a seasonal service to Athens, Hudson suggested.

“None of these are locked in yet. We will be constantly assessing demand and when we announce those routes it’ll be based on what we think are going to be really well frequented by our customers.”

David Flynn travelled to Toulouse as a guest of Qantas and Airbus.