Qantas has challenged Boeing and Airbus to build a plane capable of a 20-hour non-stop flight from eastern Australia to New York and London.
The airline says that if the plane-makers do their part, the airline would begin flights within five years. Qantas is already planning a 17-hour non-stop from Perth on Australia’s west coast to London, one of the world’s longest scheduled flights. It will begin flying in March. It will also be the first-ever airline non-stop between Australia and Europe.
Qantas’ interest in east coast flights comes because the country’s three biggest cities—Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane—are all there, and non-stop flights to Europe would require too many restrictions on passengers and cargo to make the route profitable with current planes.
Each maker has a plane in development that Qantas says “can get close,” and might be the answer with some tweaking: Boeing’s 777X and Airbus’s A350ULR. While 20 hours locked in a plane might seem awful, the airline believes travelers will prefer it to multi-flight itineraries that can often take much longer.
