Airbus has successfully completed a grueling test flight stretching over 24 hours, as an A350 jet touched down in Toulouse, France on Tuesday after departing from Melbourne, Australia without a single stopover.
The milestone is central to Qantas’ ambitious Project Sunrise initiative, which is working to establish the world’s longest nonstop commercial passenger routes — eliminating the need for layovers between Australia and Europe.
The specially configured A350-1000ULR aircraft, which features a custom extra fuel tank, stayed airborne for 24 hours and 24 minutes, traveling 23,075 kilometers — roughly 14,338 miles — before arriving at the Airbus manufacturing facility in Toulouse. Airbus has been putting the plane through a two-month testing program since June.
The flight attracted enormous public attention online. Flight-tracking service Flightradar24 reported that more than 3.6 million people monitored the plane’s journey northward through Canada, making it the second-most-tracked flight in the platform’s history. The only flight to surpass it was a 2024 flight transporting the coffin of Queen Elizabeth II.
For comparison, a Boeing 777-200LR Worldliner set a previous long-distance record in 2005, flying 21,601.7 kilometers — about 13,422 miles — from Hong Kong to London in 22 hours and 42 minutes.
Qantas has placed orders for 12 of the modified A350-1000ULR jets, which are designed to link Australia’s eastern cities with both London and New York in approximately 20 hours. The airline hopes to transform what was historically a five-day journey along the so-called “Kangaroo Route” to London into a single flight lasting between 19 and 21 hours, depending on wind conditions and flight path.
The first aircraft, capable of carrying 238 passengers and holding 20,000 liters of fuel, is scheduled for delivery in April 2027. Qantas anticipates launching daily nonstop flights between Sydney and London by October of that year.
