In 1943, five Qantas flying boats took off from Perth.

They were heading west, across the Indian Ocean during the Second World War.

They flew with their passengers in secret, in the darkness.

Up to 32 hours in the air, navigating only by the stars.

Those onboard would see the sun rise twice on a single flight, and that’s where this project gets its name.

Now, 83 years on, we’re going to honour that history by delivering something those crews would never have imagined.

A different aircraft. A different route. A very different generation of travellers.

Proving that Australia’s distance from the rest of the world should never stand in the way.

In 2017, Qantas put a challenge out to aircraft manufacturers.

We asked: build us an aircraft that can fly non-stop from Australia’s east coast to London and New York.

Airbus answered that challenge.

And after a pause through COVID, we have spent the last few years designing the aircraft, the cabin, the science, the flight path together with Rolls-Royce, with the Charles Perkins Centre at the University of Sydney, with our own engineers and leading industrial designers and crews.

And so today, I am thrilled to announce that the first Project Sunrise route will be Sydney to London.

Services will be daily and non-stop.

From Australia’s east coast to the UK, in a single flight.

And Sydney to New York will follow.

Sydney to London, has a particular place in our history.

We’ve called it the Kangaroo Route since 1947.

It’s a name we trademarked with seven stops along the way and four days from one end to the other.

And every aircraft generation since has taken a stop out of that journey.

In 2018, when we launched Perth to London non-stop with the 787, we showed our customers what it felt like to do most of the Kangaroo Route in a single flight. To this day, it delivers the highest customer satisfaction scores of any route on our international network.

Today, we’re announcing a new dawn of travel between these two incredible countries.

We’ll go on sale in February next year.

And the first flight will take off at the end of October 2027.

It’s going to save customers up to four hours, compared to the fastest one-stop service you can take today.

And it’ll give our customers something no other airline in the world can give them.

The choice to fly from Sydney to London without stopping anywhere along the way.

On an aircraft that has been specifically designed for Qantas to make these flights possible, with an onboard experience that has been tailored to suit every customer, in every cabin, through every stage of the journey.

This is the moment Qantas has been working towards since the day we were founded.

The tyranny of distance for Australians finally being conquered.

The 12 aircraft that are going to make this possible, they’re each going to carry the name of a star.

The same navigational stars those Catalina crews used in 1943.

In a moment, you’re going to see the first aircraft, freshly painted in our Qantas livery.

And it carries the name of the first of the Catalinas, Vega.

This is Project Sunrise.