Qantas Quietly Shifts Airbus A350-1000ULR Strategy, Shuns Melbourne

For nearly a decade, Qantas has been teasing how it will launch nonstop flights from Australia’s East Coast to London (LHR) and New York (JFK), under its “Project Sunrise” concept. Initially, the idea was that these flights would be operated out of Sydney (SYD) and Melbourne (MEL), which is why the airline ordered 12 Airbus A350-1000ULRs, which are specially designed long haul aircraft for these missions.

However, it appears that Qantas has quietly shifted its strategy, and now cares a lot more about Sydney than Melbourne, with plans to use A350-1000ULRs on routes that don’t really need the extra range.

Qantas to use half of A350-1000ULRs on routes that don’t need them

As I recently covered, Qantas just finally announced it plans to launch nonstop flights between Sydney and London as of October 2027, as the airline starts taking delivery of its custom built Airbus A350-1000ULRs.

These will be the longest range planes in the world, thanks to a combination of additional fuel tanks, a higher maximum takeoff weight, and a premium configuration, which limits the weight of the aircraft (and in turn, improves range). The initial intent was that those dozen planes would be used for the world’s four longest routes. Then Qantas ordered an additional dozen A350-1000s to use for general growth on existing routes, including eventually replacing Airbus A380s.

However, that strategy seems to have shifted. When you look at the investment case presentation that Qantas just put out about its A350-1000ULR, it tells a different story. Now Qantas plans to use only six aircraft for point-to-point ultra long haul flying. In other words, that just covers flights from Sydney to London and New York, with a couple of spares.

Then the remaining six A350-1000ULRs will be used for “network diversification.” The idea is that those planes will be used to replace Boeing 787-9s on existing routes, so they can be put on other routes. There has been some mention of the A350-1000ULRs potentially taking over the routes from Sydney to London and New York that operate via Perth (PER) and Auckland (AKL), respectively, as those are currently operated by the Dreamliners. While those are also ultra long haul routes, they don’t need the incremental range.

Based on the presentation, it would appear that the Dreamliners could then be redeployed to South Africa, South America, and a new destination in Europe.

Is Qantas actually backtracking, or am I hallucinating?

Obviously I follow the industry pretty closely, so when I saw this presentation slide, I was genuinely confused. For nearly a decade, I’ve been saying that Qantas intended to operate from Sydney and Melbourne to London and New York, so did I just completely make that up, or what?

Well, I did some digging, and it’s interesting to see how the carrier’s communications changed over time. Best I can tell, historically Qantas has talked about Project Sunrise in the form of connecting the East Coast of Australia directly with London and New York, and Qantas also often emphasized how Sydney flights would be first.

Interestingly, at least in writing, Qantas rarely officially committed to flying the A350-1000ULRs out of Melbourne. However, if you look at the Airbus announcement for the plane order, you’ll see this explicitly mentioned, and I don’t think Airbus is making things up, or prescribing to airlines what routes they should fly:

The A350-1000 was selected by Qantas following an evaluation known as Project Sunrise and will enable the carrier to operate the world’s longest commercial flights. These will include linking Sydney and Melbourne with destinations such as London and New York non-stop for the first time ever. 

In 2019, the airline had a press release about its Project Sunrise “research flights,” where it wrote the following:

The flights form part of planning for Project Sunrise – Qantas’ goal to operate regular, non-stop commercial flights from the east coast of Australia (Brisbane, Sydney and Melbourne) to London and New York.

So best I can tell, the airline didn’t shift strategy overnight. However, since 2022, the airline quietly stopped dropping any hints about Melbourne flights with Project Sunrise aircraft, so I guess this has been a long time coming. Given how local governments covet routes like this, I’m not surprised that Qantas didn’t want to explicitly share the change in plans.

Ultimately I’m not surprised to see this development. The economics of ultra long haul flying are extremely challenging, and it’s not surprising that Sydney works better as a market than Melbourne does, even though Melbourne can be quite lucrative as well.

Qantas doesn’t need the extra range on the other routes on which it plans to operate the A350-1000ULRs. These planes are ultimately a bit more expensive than the standard ones, though I guess the upside is that this increased maximum takeoff weight can also be used to increase cargo capacity, so there’s some upside there.

Bottom line

Qantas is getting closer to taking delivery of its first Airbus A350-1000ULR, as this will be the world’s longest range plane. While the airline still plans to fly the aircraft from Sydney to both London and New York, it looks like ultra long haul flights out of Melbourne are no longer in the cards.

Instead, it seems Qantas now plans to use six A350-1000ULRs for the Sydney to London and New York routes, and six of the planes to replace Boeing 787-9s on existing routes, with the Sydney to London and New York via Perth and Auckland flights (respectively) being the front runners.

What do you make of Qantas’ updated Airbus A350-1000ULR strategy?