Project Sunrise – the ambitious Qantas plan to launch the world’s longest nonstop flights, from Australia’s east coast to New York and London – is running into major deadline pressure: in deciding which plane to choose; what equipment to put aboard; and above all, whether the concept is economically feasible.
“Sunrise for us is still in the development phase,” Peter O’Donohue, head of Qantas’ Boeing 787 program, admitted at the TravelManagers annual national conference in Perth on Friday.
“I’ll give you what I can and I’ll share some knowledge with you on what we’re looking at,” O’Donohue told his audience, “but unfortunately we still have to get right as to whether sunrise is going to work for us economically.”
Qantas has challenged Airbus and Boeing to extend the flying range of their next generation of long-haul aircraft, to let it start non-stop service from the east coast of Australia to cities including London and New York by 2022.
Qantas chief executive Alan Joyce has said the airline will make the decision on planes by the end of this year – which is now just 20 weeks away. The airline will almost certainly choose a yet-to-be-developed variant of two existing planes. The contenders are Boeing’s B777-8 X or the Airbus A350-1000 ULR.
Chief of Qantas 787 Dreamliner program, Peter O’Donohue, at TravelManagers’ national conference in Perth on Friday
Apart from the choice of planes, a major conundrum lies in what to put aboard – it needs to be enough to keep passengers exercised and entertained for an entire day in the air, while not weighing too much.
“I’m sure you’ve heard Alan Joyce say, and it’s been in the press, we’re looking at gyms and bunks and beds and all of those things,” O’Donohue said.
“It’s extra weight,” he stated. “If we put them all on, the aircraft is not going to make it to London.”
O’Donohue said Qantas is acutely aware that it will have customers aboard for an entire day. Looking after customers is paramount – a point that tallied with the theme of this year’s TravelManagers conference: ‘Customer’.
Project Sunrise isn’t just an extension of an existing flight – having customers in the air for a whole day is something else entirely.
O’Donohue said the Qantas Perth-London nonstop service had proved a “huge success”. It is notching up 90%+ load factors on every flight and it receives the highest satisfaction score of any service Qantas operates.
People loved nonstop flights, O’Donohue said. They didn’t want intermediate stops that involved going through security twice and having everything X-rayed again. People just wanted to get on the plane at one end of their journey and get off at the other.
Qantas will start B787-9 service nonstop between Brisbane and Chicago next April. The airline would fly Chicago-Sydney if it could, O’Donohue said, but to do that it would have to fly with 50 fewer passengers, which isn’t economic.
Qantas never cuts it fine – it keeps, at the very least, an hour’s extra flying time in reserve in the fuel tanks on long-haul legs like Perth-London.
Written by Peter Needham
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