Imagine boarding a flight in Melbourne and stepping off it in France a little over a day later, having never once touched down along the way. That’s exactly what has just happened , and it brings a long-held dream of stopover-free travel between Australia and Europe closer than ever.
An Airbus A350 test aircraft flew non-stop from Melbourne to Toulouse, staying airborne for 24 hours and 24 minutes and covering 23,075 kilometres.
The journey was so remarkable that flight trackers around the world tuned in to watch it unfold in real time.
Flight-tracking service Flightradar24 said the flight was the second-most-tracked in its history, behind only the 2024 flight carrying Queen Elizabeth II’s coffin, with more than 3.6 million people following its path north over Canada.
For anyone who has endured the old five-day slog to London on the original Kangaroo Route, with its string of refuelling stops, this test flight represents the shape of things to come.
It forms part of Qantas’s Project Sunrise, the airline’s plan to launch the world’s longest commercial passenger routes and do away with stopovers between Australia and Europe altogether.
The aircraft used for the test, a specially adapted A350-1000ULR fitted with an extra fuel tank, is the same model Qantas intends to fly on its non-stop Sydney to London service starting in 2027.
Qantas has ordered 12 of these modified aircraft, built to connect Australia’s east coast directly with London and New York in around 20 hours. Each plane will carry 20,000 litres of fuel and seat 238 passengers, with the first due for delivery in April 2027.
Daily non-stop flights between Sydney and London are expected to begin from October 2027. Depending on winds and routing, the trip that once took the best part of a week will be squeezed into a single flight of 19 to 21 hours.
It’s worth remembering the previous record holder too. Back in 2005, a Boeing 777-200LR flew 21,601.7 kilometres from Hong Kong to London in 22 hours and 42 minutes. This new test flight has now gone further and longer still.
For those of us who remember when a trip to Europe meant multiple connections, cramped transit lounges and jet lag stacked upon jet lag, that single unbroken flight path from Melbourne to Toulouse is more than an engineering feat. It is a promise that the reunion with family overseas, or that long-postponed trip to see the grandchildren settled abroad, might soon be just one long sleep away.
