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Qantas chooses London as the first Project Sunrise destination from Sydney
June 18th 2026
On June 17, 2026, Qantas Airways announced that it will launch its world-first non-stop services between Sydney and London from October 2027. Read More » It will be the first time the Kangaroo Route has ever been flown without stops from Australia’s east coast. Australia’s flag carrier has been flying between Sydney and London since 1947, when the original Kangaroo Route took four days with seven stops in Darwin, Singapore, Calcutta, Karachi, Cairo, Castel Benito and Rome, on its way to the UK. “Qantas was built on the belief that Australia’s distance from the rest of the world should never stand in the way. The pioneering spirit of generations of our people has forged that path ever since, and today is the most significant step in that mission in our 105-year history. Since we first flew the Kangaroo Route in 1947, where we stopped seven times on the way to London, every generation of aircraft has taken a stop out of the journey. Today, we’re taking out the last one. We made a commitment in 2017 that Qantas would conquer the final frontier of long-haul aviation and connect Australia’s east coast directly to London, something that has never before been possible. From October 2027, that promise becomes reality,” Qantas Group CEO Vanessa Hudson said during the ceremony of unveiling the first Airbus A350-1000ULR in Qantas livery at Toulouse. Qantas will take delivery of 12 aircraft in total, each configured with 238 seats across four cabins. The new nonstop flights will cut up to 4 hours off the travel time compared to current one-stop services, reducing the journey to approximately 20 hours.
