Qantas plans to release ultra-long-haul flights from Australia to London and New York in 2024
03 February, 2021
Qantas strategies to introduce the world's longest passenger flights from Australia to London and NY in 2024.
Known as Project Sunrise, the ultra-long-haul flights were in the beginning scheduled for a release date on early 2023.
Those plans were "put on ice" as a result of Covid-19, said Alan Joyce, chief executive of Qantas.
Speaking throughout a Eurocontrol Straight Talk interview on Tuesday, Joyce confirmed the airline was first very thinking about forging in advance with the project.
"Before Covid-19, we'd done three check flights, I flew on two of these. They were an amazing experience. We'd picked an aircraft and were literally weeks from ordering it. We'd done the cope with Airbus. We'd done a manage our pilots," explained Joyce.
"We still desire to revisit it by the end of '21, with the potential to do it in '24 probably, and onwards," he said.
What's Project Sunrise?
The Project Sunrise operation got underway this past year when Qantas flew record-breaking research flights within its plans to introduce new ultra-long-haul commercial flights.
Test flights from New York to Sydney and from London to Australia recorded instances of just under 20 time apiece. They gave the airline nearly 60 time of "Sunrise flying" knowledge and several data details on crew and passenger well-being during much longer hauls.
The airline made the decision that the Airbus A350-1000 aircraft will be best-appropriate to operate the brand new routes, however the pandemic stopped any more progress.
If Qantas will introduce Project Sunrise flights commercially, they would take the title of the longest flight period from Qantas's existing Perth-to-London non-stop assistance. This was introduced in March 2018, but is currently paused because of of Covid-19.
Joyce told Euromonitor on Tuesday that, pre-Covid, the Perth-to-London route was first Qantas's most profitable, and has "the best customer satisfaction for just about any path on Qantas's network, in spite of appearing the longest flight".
Passengers will require Covid-19 vaccine to fly
Travellers hoping to fly on Qantas flights later on have to have been vaccinated against Covid-19.
Joyce features said that vaccinations against the virus would turn into a prerequisite for international travellers after they become freely available.
For now, the airline has grounded almost all of its international flights in response to the pandemic. Domestically, it is rebuilding its network.
Qantas is currently selling fares on flights to 62 destinations across Australia - that's five a lot more than it had been operating to pre-Covid.
The airline has introduced new flights from Sydney to Merimbula on the brand new South Wales Sapphier Coast, and can also fly to Griffith in February.
From Melbourne, Qantas will add flights to Newcastle, Merimbula, Mount Gambier, Wagga Wagga and Albury in February and March.
Source: www.thenationalnews.com