The first Airbus A350-1000ULR of Qantas’ Project Sunrise landed in Toulouse today after completing a 24-hour, 24-minute direct flight from Melbourne, Australia, covering a distance of 12,460 nautical miles (22,500 km) – the longest journey undertaken by this model to date.
The aircraft originally departed on July 23 for the Australian city to conduct development tests. The primary objective of the mission was to demonstrate that the aircraft, powered by two Rolls-Royce Trent XWB-97 engines, can achieve a 23-hour block time, the margin required to cover the estimated 21 hours and 40 minutes of flight time on the Australian airline’s future commercial routes, also including reserves for holding, diversions, and taxiing.
The A350-1000’s record-breaking route between Melbourne and Toulouse
During the journey, engineers evaluated the fuel management systems and cabin comfort, with special focus on the additional rear center tank (RCT), which has a capacity of 20,900 liters and enables a range of nearly 10,000 nautical miles, according to information provided by the company.
“Although we already demonstrated much of the RCT’s functionality earlier in the flight test campaign, on these long-range flights we finalized some outstanding test points,” explained Xavier Pepin, Airbus test pilot and commander of the return leg.
“We filled this tank to validate all the necessary parameters during the mission, which made this, together with cabin comfort, the main focus of our testing,” he added.
On the second leg, the team addressed the backup points that were not completed on the outbound journey — a stage in which various temperature configurations were stabilized over a flight of approximately 20 hours. The crew also examined the new double flight crew rest compartment (FCRC), a module specifically designed for the model’s long-range missions, which has two separate sections with individual entrances to prevent pilots from disturbing each other when entering or exiting.
Two Qantas captains, Andrew Coull and David Summergreene, joined the cockpit in Melbourne for the return leg alongside three Airbus pilots, two flight test engineers and three cabin test engineers. “We established a shift system to allow a Qantas pilot to take the controls at specific times,” said Pepin. “These pilots are already qualified on the A350, and this mission gave them their first experience with the -1000ULR variant,” the commander detailed.
For the return, Airbus selected a route over the Pacific towards Los Angeles, crossing the United States and Canada, then crossing the Atlantic south of Greenland before overflying the United Kingdom and descending into southern France. The manufacturer opted for a North Atlantic track to avoid published commercial air routes and prevent air traffic control issues stemming from flight plan discrepancies.
To manage fatigue during more than 24 continuous hours in the air, four-hour shifts were implemented with rotations every two hours, ensuring constant overlap in the cockpit to maintain situational awareness. Because the new double crew rest compartment was occupied with ventilation measurement equipment, the crew slept in the eight-bunk rest area located at the rear of the aircraft.