Qantas Project Sunrise goes ahead, 12 new A350-1000s ordered

[anat0l]

Nice sentiment but doubtful. I bet Hudson is on it.

Wouldn't doubt for a second that Hudson will be on. She can settle for J - plenty of seats and likely where most of the press are going to be (heck, and the "influencers").

That would be a change. Just a few months ago they were talking about Project Sunrise aircraft allowing them to fly SYD-LHR via the Arctic to avoid the ME airspace!

What would be the likely flight route of SYD-LHR non-stop? Assuming both scenarios, i.e. whether the war is still on or has already stopped?

 

[transpactraveller]

What would be the likely flight route of SYD-LHR non-stop? Assuming both scenarios, i.e. whether the war is still on or has already stopped?

They were talking about seasonal routing that would change based on tail-winds.

This is what Hudson said last year:

“Our pilots are doing lots of flight planning for that flight. They’ve got over 12 months’ worth of wind data and are doing lots of flight-planning simulations. Don’t just assume that you have to fly west [from Sydney to London] all the time – there will be other routes that we can take.”

“At some times of the year, the fastest way to get from Sydney to London will be over Japan and over the North Pole and down the other side because of the wind direction.”

In the same interview she said they wouldn't start any of the Sunrise flights until they had 3 aircraft, and they'd be deploying the first aircraft on flights to New Zealand for crew training.

 

[LondonAussie]

Hudson actually started changing the messaging about a year ago, hinting that JFK might come first before LHR.

Back then the concern was about ongoing Russian airspace closures and how that would impact the SYD-LHR direct routing.

Now the latest conflicts in the Middle East make it an even more precarious route. Particularly with the Perth non-stops having to divert via Singapore. It wouldn’t be a good look if Sunrise aircraft had to regularly do the same.

So it would not surprise me at all if they’ve now fully pivoted to JFK being the launch route. It’s the safer option.

 

[markis10]

Syd-JFK via Japan was an old Northwest routing, very scenic.

 

[dajop]

There’s also maintenance outside of peak travel times to consider, where planes are grounded for multiple days or longer. They need to have sufficient planes to be able to do that. So maybe 5 in rotation with 1 in maintenance.

Thinking of the bean counters, could still be possible with 4 + 1 in maintenance, if they can achieve 2 hr turns in SYD & JFK.
Hypothetically, SYD-LHR 18:00M/06:00Tu, LHR-SYD 11:30Tu/15:30W SYD-JFK 17:30W/20:30W JFK-SYD 23:00W/08:00F

 

[Kiwi_Flyer]

Thinking of the bean counters, could still be possible with 4 + 1 in maintenance, if they can achieve 2 hr turns in SYD & JFK.
Hypothetically, SYD-LHR 18:00M/06:00Tu, LHR-SYD 11:30Tu/15:30W SYD-JFK 17:30W/20:30W JFK-SYD 23:00W/08:00F

Not realistic and lhr-syd arrives 2nd day after departure not 1st day.

 

[markis10]

Not realistic and lhr-syd arrives 2nd day after departure not 1st day.

LHR-Syd would not arrive second day, QF10 which leaves 20 minutes later doesn’t now

 

[Quickstatus]

they need some ability to have service recovery when there are inevitable unexpected delays

The airline has never deliberately kept aircraft in spare as a just in case.

There was a few months a little while ago when there were some excess A380 when the aircraft were coming back from Covid storage and the airline marketed it as an "operational spare". They made a big song and dance about it at the time. That didn't last long once the aircraft was sequenced back into normal programming.