by Lacey Pfalz
Last updated: 9:00 AM ET, Sat July 25, 2026
Qantas’s new ultra-long-distance aircraft landed in Melbourne, Australia, on Friday, July 24, after a 19-hour test flight from Toulouse, France, moving the airline’s ambitious Project Sunrise one step towards completion.
According to The Guardian, the aircraft is an Airbus A350-1000ULR called Vega, specially designed for ultra-long-distance flights. It became the most-watched flight on flight tracking website flightradar24.com, with over 67,000 people tuning in on Friday as it tracked over 10,500 miles across the Earth.
It departed Toulouse at 7:33 a.m. Thursday and landed in Melbourne over 19 hours later, at 10:46 a.m. local time.
Qantas’s announcement of the test flight called it a “major milestone,” explaining that five Airbus flight test pilots and five flight test engineers were onboard during the flight, testing all systems—including the additional 20,000-liter fuel tank that will allow the aircraft to fly up to 22 hours nonstop.
Two Qantas pilots will return with the test pilots and engineers on Monday, July 27, when the aircraft flies back to Toulouse, a flight which would take longer heading northward.
The Project Sunrise flights will begin, provided they receive full regulatory approval, from October 2027 onwards, connecting Sydney to London as the longest nonstop commercial flights in the world. The airline will soon take delivery of 12 ultra-long-distance aircraft in total, equipped with 238 seats across four cabin categories.
Qantas’s chief technical pilot, Alex Passerini, told Channel Seven that while crew will be able to take regular rest breaks on the airplane, “Everyone’s going to get tired.”
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