Qantas completed what is believed to be the longest-ever commercial flight when its Airbus jet landed in Toulouse on Tuesday after a flight from Melbourne lasting 24 hours and 24 minutes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The flight, which triggered a surge in online tracking, is part of the airline\u2019s Project Sunrise in which it plans to use a new A350 jet to fly nonstop from Australia to London.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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The specially adapted A350-1000ULR airliner \u2060is due to debut with the Australian carrier\u2019s nonstop Sydney-London route from 2027. \u200bAirbus has been conducting \u200ca two-month test campaign \u200con the aircraft since June.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Airbus said the aircraft, which boasts a \u200cextra fuel tank, remained in the air for 24 hours and 24 minutes, covering 23,075km (14,338 miles) in a route over the Pacific and Atlantic oceans without stopping, before landing at the plane\u2019s factory in Toulouse in south-west France.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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Tuesday\u2019s flight is thought to be the longest ever by a commercial plane, beating the previous record of 22 hours and 42 minutes set by a Boeing 777\u2013200LR in 2005 between Hong Kong and London via the Pacific in 2005.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In a test last week, the plane flew from Toulouse to Melbourne via the Indian Ocean in just over 19 hours.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Flight-tracking provider Flightradar24 said the trip was the second-most-tracked flight ever on its channels \u2013 behind a 2022 flight \u200ccarrying Queen Elizabeth II\u2019s coffin \u2013 with more than 3.6 million people following its progress northwards via Canada.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Qantas has ordered 12 modified A350-1000ULR aircraft, designed to connect Australia\u2019s east coast with London and New York in \u2060about 20 hours.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The services aim to turn what was \u200bonce a five-day \u200bjourney on the \u201cKangaroo Route\u201d to \u200bLondon into a single flight lasting 19 to 21 \u200bhours, depending on \u200crouting and winds.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The \u200bfirst aircraft, \u200bwhich carries 20,000 litres of fuel and can seat 238 passengers, is due for delivery in April 2027.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Qantas expects to operate daily nonstop flights between Sydney and London from October 2027.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Qantas completed what is believed to be the longest-ever commercial flight when its Airbus jet landed in Toulouse on Tuesday after a flight from Melbourne lasting 24 hours and 24 minutes. The flight, which triggered a surge in online tracking, is part of the airline\u2019s Project Sunrise in which it plans to use a new […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":53003,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_post_source_name":"theguardian","_post_source_url":"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com","footnotes":""},"categories":[50,12],"tags":[6217,11363,10494,3347,8249,5192,10387,1953,7897,12635,6901,11365,11355,5575,6569,3883,8342,1362,8394,7547,1821,3684,4063,990,6332,6830,8386,3927,3346,10353],"class_list":["post-53002","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-technology","category-world-news","tag-airbus","tag-aircraft","tag-airline","tag-australia","tag-australian","tag-boeing","tag-campaign","tag-canada","tag-coffin","tag-delivery","tag-elizabeth-ii","tag-factory","tag-flight","tag-france","tag-fuel","tag-hong-kong","tag-indian","tag-indian-ocean","tag-instagram","tag-jet","tag-kong","tag-london","tag-melbourne","tag-new-york","tag-online","tag-plane","tag-platform","tag-queen","tag-sydney","tag-x"],"blocksy_meta":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53002","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=53002"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53002\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":53004,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53002\/revisions\/53004"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/53003"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=53002"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=53002"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=53002"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}