Qantas CEO Vanessa Hudson. Photo: Geoffrey Thomas
Qantas will likely use a North Pole route to achieve its Project Sunrise Sydney to London nonstop with the A350-1000 to be delivered in 2025.
In an exclusive media round table ahead of the launch flight from Perth to Paris Qantas CEO Vanessa Hudson said that the the airline's operations team that have been “flying the route” on a daily basis for the past year has found that often the North Pole route was quickest.
“It's been fascinating to actually see all of the different routes that we would take from Sydney [or Melbourne & Brisbane] to London. Some of those routes are north, over the North Pole rather than west over Europe. Lots of planning goes in, particularly for these long flights to make sure that we get it right, most efficient, but importantly that we can carry maximum payload. Depending on the season the winds favour the North Pole route as the quickest,” Ms Hudson said.
“We've this new system called Constellation, which is a flight planning system and tracks all of the winds globally, east, west, north, south. So we put Sydney-London into the simulation and it calculates, based on what we can see today, the best direction to go.”
That routing would be due north from Sydney over the western tip of Alaska or Canada across the North Pole and then south to London. However, for the return flight to Australia the more traditional route over Europe, India and Asia would be used.
Ms Hudson said that Qantas has two more A380s to be returned to service taking the fleet to 10 and these will come back into service early next year. When those two A380s rejoin the fleet they will free up other aircraft such as 787s and A330s and Ms Hudson said the airline is looking at Perth-Johannesburg and Perth-Auckland with the latter linking up with the airline’s Auckland-New York service.
Ms Hudson also highlighted Perth-Athens as a protentional season route. “Every person I speak to at the moment is going to Greece, but obviously again, when we have the aircraft, that is when we make the decisions on if and whether it's all round or seasonal.”
Ms Hudson said the airline was confident that the A350-1000s would be delivered mid 2026 which is six months late but there were still some concerns surrounding the supply chain for the suppliers of the seats for the 239-seat ultra-luxurious aircraft which will have more space for all classes including economy.
Last year Qantas ordered another 12 A350-1000s, 4 Boeing 787-9s and 8 787-10s but these will be delivered in a yet to be determined higher density configuration to replace the airline’s A380s and A330s.
Ms Hudson is upbeat on the another Airbus aircraft on order - the single airline A321neoXLRs which are due for delivery next year. “The range capability of those aircraft are enabling us to look at routes such as Canberra-Singapore and Adelaide-Singapore as well as Perth to India,” Ms Hudson said.
However, no announcements have yet been made on what routes the aircraft will pioneer or the configuration but the plan is to use them on domestic transcontinental routes to Perth and on international routes.
It’s likely the A321neoXLR will have a more spacious configuration and the standard A321neos.
The A321neo-XLR is part of the largest order ever placed by Qantas for the A350-1000, A320s, A321s and A220s. The A320 family and the A220s are replacing the airline’s long serving Boeing 737-800s and the Boeing 717s.
These new aircraft will give Qantas an unprecedented level of flexibility cutting costs and helping to keep airfares declining in relation to average weekly earnings.
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