From the CEO
Qantas was founded at the dawn of air travel in an outback town at the bottom of the world so we know all about the tyranny of distance. For our whole history, we’ve had to work harder to fly further – and as we approach our 100th year, we’re about to embark on our longest flight yet.
Later this month, using brand-new Qantas Boeing 787 Dreamliners, we will do what no commercial airline has ever done before: fly non-stop from New York to Sydney. We will also fly direct from London to Sydney in November for only the second time in history.
These are research flights and they’re all part of our plan to hopefully operate regular commercial services non-stop from the east coast of Australia to London and New York. That plan is called “Project Sunrise”. For us in Australia, it represents the final frontier of aviation.
On board the Project Sunrise research flights will be about 40 people and crew, including scientists and medical experts from the University of Sydney’s Charles Perkins Centre and Monash University, who will monitor the impact of the 19-hour flight on the health and wellbeing of everyone on board.
Passengers will be fitted with wearable technology and take part in different activities throughout the flight, while the experts record sleep patterns, food and beverage consumption, lighting, physical movement and inflight entertainment use. Meanwhile, our pilots will wear a device that tracks brainwave patterns and monitors alertness so we can determine the best patterns for work and rest.
The Dreamliner can only make the distance because it will have very few people on board. We’re currently assessing two types of aircraft (one from Boeing, one from Airbus) that have the range for these long flights with a full payload, and we’ll make a final yes/no decision on Project Sunrise at the end of this year.
But even if Sunrise doesn’t go ahead, this research is going to help our knowledge about creating a better overall experience for crew and passengers right across our long-haul network. We used research data to shape the service on what is currently our longest flight, Perth-London, and it now has our highest customer satisfaction rating.
We all tend to be impatient for progress but it’s amazing when you think about how far we’ve come. In 1935, the first Qantas service from Australia to London took 12 days and made dozens of stops along the way. Passengers even had to complete one European leg of the journey by train.
Whether your flight today is long or short, thanks for choosing Qantas – and have a great trip.