Premium market key driver behind Qantas’ Project Sunrise success

Qantas has a pretty good picture of how it will make the Project Sunrise flights work for them and generate good profits and margins. The ultra-long-haul flights to the UK and the US with the Airbus A350-1000 will be launched once the first of twelve aircraft is delivered in late 2025. The Australian carrier thinks it will be a hugely successful project, CEO Alan Joyce and CFO Vanessa Hudson told media during a roundtable in Istanbul on the sidelines of the IATA AGM. Premium market key driver behind Qantas’ Project Sunrise success.

During its Investor Day last week,

 Qantas said that once all A350s are in service in FY30, Project Sunrise flights will generate A$400 million in incremental profits. While London Heathrow, New York, and Los Angeles have been mentioned as the destinations, Joyce said that the carrier is looking at other options.

“What we always do is that we have an indicative network today, but that is still a long time away. The world can change, economies can go into a recession, so there is always a level of flexibility with the aircraft,” said Joyce. “We always said that the big market for us historically is the UK and North America. That is where the focus initially is going to be. So we indicatively said we would do Melbourne and Sydney to London. We have four Heathrow slots, we are only using two of them at the moment, British Airways rents two from us. So there is a growth opportunity and an opportunity for a lot of First Class and Premium traffic.”