Qantas Will Fly Sydney to New York Nonstop From 2028 on a 238-Seat A350

Qantas confirmed on September 22, 2026 that it will launch nonstop services between Sydney and New York from the middle of 2028. The airline says it will be the first nonstop commercial service ever flown between Australia and New York, and it will sell the first tickets in August 2027.

New York is the second route confirmed under Project Sunrise, the ultra-long-haul program Qantas has been building for close to a decade. The first, Sydney to London nonstop, starts in October 2027.

Group chief executive Vanessa Hudson said passengers will board in Sydney and arrive “around 18 hours later without stopping once, cutting around three hours off the current fastest travel time.” Qantas flies Sydney to New York today as a daily one-stop service via Auckland.

The Aircraft Is a Standard A350 With a Fuel Tank Where Seats Would Go

The flights will be flown by specially configured Airbus A350-1000ULR aircraft. Qantas says the variant carries an additional 20,000-liter fuel tank, roughly 5,300 US gallons, which lets it fly more than 9,900 miles (16,000 km) and stay airborne for up to 22 hours.

The two companies do not quite agree on the numbers. Airbus puts that rear center tank at 20,900 liters and rates the ULR at almost 10,000 nautical miles, against 9,100 nautical miles for a standard A350-1000, which suggests Qantas is quoting what the route needs rather than what the aircraft can do.

Qantas will take 12 of the aircraft in total, each fitted with 238 seats across four cabins. That seat count is what makes the route possible, not a luxury flourish.

The aircraft is powered by two Rolls-Royce Trent XWB-97 engines. Qantas pilots have started training on Australia’s first A350 simulator in Sydney, and the airline says more than 360 pilots and 1,200 cabin crew will be trained by the time the twelfth aircraft arrives.

The Test Aircraft Has Already Flown Longer Than the Route Needs

The first test aircraft is in the final stages of its flight test program. On July 28, 2026 it landed at Toulouse after flying 12,460 nautical miles nonstop from Melbourne in 24 hours and 24 minutes.

Qantas describes that flight as record-breaking and a first for any commercial airliner. Airbus is more measured about it, calling it the program’s longest development flight and its longest point-to-point flight, and stopping short of claiming a record.

The distinction matters because it was a development flight, not a certification flight. It showed the airframe can stay up far longer than Sydney to New York will require, but the certification work that actually clears the route is still ahead.

Whether It Is the World’s Longest Flight Depends on the Route Next Door

At around 18 hours, Sydney to New York would land just short of the current title. Reporting by CNBC, which interviewed Hudson in New York, notes that Singapore Airlines already flies New York to Singapore in a sector that can top 19 hours.

Qantas’s own Sydney to London service is the one expected to take that record when it starts in October 2027, at roughly 20 hours. So the New York route will be historic for Australia without being the longest flight in the world.

Flight times on any ultra-long sector also move with direction and season, which is why airlines quote these services in approximate hours rather than a fixed schedule.

The Demand Case, and Who Measured It

Qantas says demand on its New York traffic has nearly doubled since 2023, and that US visitor arrivals to Australia are up five percent year on year, citing Australian Bureau of Statistics data from September 2026.

It also reports that stated intent to book an ultra-long-haul flight rose from 58 to 70 percent since February 2026, reaching 80 percent among premium travelers. That figure comes from research an external firm conducted in May 2026 and Qantas commissioned, which is worth knowing when reading it.

The harder evidence is the flying already done. Qantas says nearly two million passengers have flown its nonstop long-haul routes since 2018, and that those routes score highest for customer satisfaction on its international network.

Hudson told CNBC that the Perth to London service, a 17-hour-plus sector flown by a Boeing 787, proved there is “absolutely a customer who wants this and is prepared to pay a premium for it.” Passengers, she said, are trying to avoid connecting at all.