An Airbus A350-1000ULR aircraft operated by Qantas completed a flight lasting 24 hours and 24 minutes, traveling from Melbourne to Toulouse in south-west France. The journey covered 23,075 kilometers across the Pacific and Atlantic oceans without stopping, establishing what is believed to be the longest commercial flight on record. The previous record was held by a Boeing 777–200LR, which completed a flight of 22 hours and 42 minutes in 2005.
The specially modified aircraft is part of Qantas’s Project Sunrise initiative, which aims to establish nonstop routes from Australia to major international destinations. Airbus has been conducting a two-month testing campaign on the aircraft since June, which included an earlier test flight from Toulouse to Melbourne via the Indian Ocean lasting just over 19 hours. The flight generated significant public interest, becoming the second-most-tracked flight on the Flightradar24 platform, with more than 3.6 million people monitoring its progress.
Qantas has ordered 12 of the modified A350-1000ULR aircraft, each equipped with an additional 20,000 liters of fuel capacity and designed to carry 238 passengers. The airline plans to introduce the first aircraft in April 2027, with daily nonstop flights between Sydney and London expected to commence from October 2027. The new service is projected to reduce travel time between Sydney and London to approximately 19 to 21 hours, depending on routing and wind conditions, substantially shorter than the journey times previously required on the route.
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