Qantas Sets Mid-2028 for 18-Hour Sydney-New York Nonstop
Qantas will launch direct flights from Sydney to New York from mid-2028, with a scheduled flight time of 18 hours. The service will be the second route in Project Sunrise, the carrier's program for ultra-long nonstop flights, after Sydney to London flights scheduled to begin in October 2027. It will be the first commercial direct service from Sydney Kingsford-Smith Airport to New York's JFK Airport. The Guardian
The current Qantas Sydney to New York trip, with a stopover in Los Angeles, takes 21 hours. Tickets for the nonstop are set to go on sale in August 2027.
How the flights will work
The operation rests on 12 Airbus A350-1000ULR aircraft fitted with extra fuel tanks. ULR stands for ultra-long-range, a version built to stay in the air much longer. The first aircraft is expected to arrive in Australia in April 2027. Qantas puts the type's capability at more than 16,000km and up to 22 hours nonstop.
That range has already been tested for even longer. A test A350 completed a 24-hour, 24-minute flight from Melbourne to the Airbus manufacturing facility in Toulouse, France, believed to be the longest-ever commercial flight.
The cabin is configured for 238 seats in total, which is a low density for this airframe. The layout is 140 standard economy seats, 40 premium economy seats, 52 business suites and 6 first-class suites. More than 360 pilots and 1,200 cabin crew will be trained to operate the A350 by the time the full fleet has arrived.
Qantas's first Project Sunrise nonstop from Sydney to London will take roughly 20 hours and will remove the traditional stopover. Reuters
Qantas is planning more 20-hour direct flights from Perth in future. It has dropped earlier talk of Project Sunrise routes from Brisbane or Melbourne. Sydney and Perth are now the named Sunrise origins.
Ticket sales, demand and money
The commercial case is built on premium demand, meaning strong sales of business, premium economy and first-class seats. Qantas expects Project Sunrise flights and sustained premium demand to increase its earnings by $400 million over the next five years. It expects profit margins to rise from 4% to 10% on those flights.
Demand signals on the New York pairing are uneven. Qantas said demand for its flights in and out of New York has doubled since 2023. Short-term arrivals from the US to Australia rose 4% in the year to July 2026 compared with the prior year, according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics. Australians travelling to and returning from the US dropped 9% in the year to July 2026.
Other planes and routes
Sunrise sits inside a wider fleet renewal. Qantas placed a firm order for 12 Boeing 787 aircraft for its international fleet. It also ordered 20 new A321XLR aircraft, taking its total order for the A321XLR to 48, with the new-configuration aircraft to begin arriving in calendar year 2028. Qantas Newsroom Its new seasonal service between Sydney and Las Vegas runs through to March 2027.
The broader context here is about revenue risk. The 238-seat layout concentrates income in the front cabins. That fits the margin expansion plan from 4% to 10%, but it leaves little buffer if corporate and high-end leisure demand softens over a five-year horizon. The directional split also matters for yield management, or how Qantas prices seats to fill the plane, because inbound growth and a 9% fall in Australian travel to the US affect filling premium seats in both directions on an 18-hour sector.
Looking ahead, fleet size is the second factor to watch. Twelve ULR airframes must cover two ultra-long-haul city pairs plus spares and maintenance rotation, while crew qualification scales to hundreds of pilots and more than a thousand cabin crew. Delivery timing, with Sydney to London entry in October 2027 and Sydney to New York from mid-2028, creates a sequential proving period rather than a simultaneous launch. The decision to center future growth on Sydney and Perth, and to drop Brisbane and Melbourne from Sunrise language, points to consolidating feed and premium volume at two gateways before committing additional capacity.
