Spring-loaded: Single-bound ‘Kangaroo’ routes beckon as Airbus starts flight-testing Qantas A350¶
Australian carrier plots novel Sydney-London tracks and shows off cabin for ambitious nonstop Project Sunrise flights.
Just one flight will account for a quarter of the airborne certification testing for Airbus’s ultra-long-range version of the A350-1000, underlining the extraordinary capability demanded by Qantas’s ambitious Project Sunrise.
Project Sunrise is the natural endgame of Qantas’s progressive effort to establish nonstop intercontinental services. While it launched a Boeing 787-9 route from Perth to London in March 2018, the aspiration remained a similar link from the Australian east coast.
Airbus had initially pitched a modified A350-1000 with 319t maximum take-off weight variant to Qantas, before tweaking the twinjet to achieve 322t. But the Project Sunrise aircraft, designated the -1000ULR, will benefit from a further increase to 324t.
The flight-test programme, set to last 75-80h, commenced on 2 June with the maiden flight of MSN707, the first aircraft to carry the integral 20,000-litre aft centre fuel tank that will give the twinjet the ability to operate Sydney-London nonstop.
“It’s a mark of the minimum intrusion on the basic aircraft design that the first flight was simply the same test that we’d do for any production A350,” says Airbus chief commercial test pilot Malcom Ridley.
Cruise performance — clearly critical to Project Sunrise — has been an “early priority to make sure we were right, and other fuel consumption figures were on the mark”, he says. “We’re still analysing what we’ve seen on those early flights, but so far it looks correct.”
Ridley says the test regime will demonstrate that aircraft systems can sustain the cabin for the duration, and that functions such as smoke clearance, and fuel transfer from the aft centre tank operate as designed.
“Obviously, cabin comfort comes in here, and as part of that, we’re going to do a very long flight,” he adds. “In fact, we’re going to do a quarter of the flight test programme in one flight — we’re going to do 22 hours on that flight.”
Star ships¶
Project Sunrise takes its name from Qantas Empire Airways’ Consolidated PBY Catalina flying-boat services that linked Perth to a UK military base in Ceylon — now Sri Lanka — in order to maintain Australia-UK diplomatic and mail connections in the Second World War. Five Catalinas carried out flights in darkness spanning 27-32h, sufficient for pilots and their few passengers to see the sun rise twice.
“We’re going to honour that history by delivering something that those crews would never have imagined,” says Qantas chief executive Vanessa Hudson. “A different aircraft, a different route, and a very different generation of travellers.”
Qantas’s fleet of 12 A350-1000ULRs will carry the identities of stars, in respect of the celestial navigation used by the flying-boat pilots. The first, MSN814, bears the name ‘Vega’, the brightest in the constellation Lyra, as did one of the Catalinas — the other four were called Antares, Rigel, Spica and Altair.
The initial A350 will operate to London Heathrow from October next year, completing the ‘Kangaroo’ route’s evolution from a series of hops to a single bound.
Such is the flightpath to be covered — the Sydney-London great-circle span borders on 9,200nm (17,000km) — that three aircraft will be assigned, each with four pilots and 14 cabin crew. Qantas is training 360 pilots to support the ULR fleet.
“This is a moment Qantas has been working towards since the day we were founded,” says Hudson, adding that a New York JFK service will follow “very quickly afterwards”.
“The tyranny of distance for Australians finally has been conquered.”
Qantas chief financial officer Rob Marcolina, staying with the astronomical theme of sunrise and stars, describes the A350-1000ULR programme as an “absolute moonshot” for the airline and for Airbus.
He says the size of the market, including premium leisure, favoured Sydney over Melbourne as the Sunrise launch city, but does not mean Melbourne will overlooked for future ULR operations.
“Either would have been a great choice,” he says. “But one of them had to go first, and I think we’re really comfortable with it coming out of Sydney.”
He believes Qantas will have no problem finding sectors on which to deploy the rest of its ULR fleet.
“I think there’s many of them and it’s not just Sydney,” he says. “There are a number of routes. That’s what the network teams are very excited about. There won’t be an infinite amount but we believe, based on the customer base and the business case, that there’ll be quite a few of them.”
Pole position¶
Qantas chief technical pilot Alex Passerini insists that, while the A350-1000ULR will have the integral fuel tank, and a low-density interior at just 238 seats, the aircraft is “not an orphan fleet, or particularly unique that we’ve created a sub-fleet”.
Passerini says that weight discipline is “hugely important” when trying to achieve the ranges involved with the Sunrise routes, but Qantas also aims to benefit from optimised flightpaths.
Qantas’s specific needs, different from those of other airlines, led the carrier to build a bespoke cloud-based flight-planning system — called Constellation — through a software algorithm and data-management partnership with the University of Sydney, Frequentis, and Smart4Aviation.
Constellation absorbs large quantities of operational data to model thousands of flightpaths and find the most efficient route, avoiding headwinds and riding tailwinds.
“We’re ingesting high-resolution wind models to make the planning phase as accurate as possible,” says Passerini, pointing out that every extra minute of flight equates to 100kg of fuel.
“The planning phase is super important because that’s going to describe how much fuel you load on the airplane, your flight time, and any restrictions that are applied to you on the route. So that’s a super important system for us that’s unlocked this capability.
“You can’t buy it off-the-shelf. It’s a development that’s gone on for a decade and…we think it’s the best system in the world.”
For 70-75% of the time, particularly during the northern hemisphere summer, the aircraft will follow a Sydney-London course similar to the conventional westbound flightpaths over the Middle East.
But Passerini, who flies the Perth-London route, says the northern winter can bring concentrated mid-latitude jet stream conditions which impact the flight time.
“So there will be days where payload is challenged because of the distances that we’re talking about,” he says.
He credits Constellation with helping to devise a less-intuitive, “new and novel” alternative: a transpacific route to the UK.
This route involves flying north across the Pacific, passing east of Japan and turning over northern Alaska, before skirting the North Pole and heading south over Scotland to approach London from the north.
“The advantage of this is, obviously, the airspace constraints are a lot less,” says Passerini, adding that the oceanic regions feature lower-density traffic and more flexibility to optimise free-flight tracks, cruise altitudes and fuel-burn.
“So we’re not stuck on fixed tracks and, on the day, this may be the best route,” he says, adding that Constellation will determine this based on the conditions.
The concept of an Arctic polar route and approach to London from the north after a flight from the southern hemisphere “does take a few moments to process”, he states.
But he adds: “The remarkable range of this airplane allows us to open new flightpaths that were once inconceivable.”
The A350-1000ULR, powered by Rolls-Royce Trent XWB-97 engines, will be introduced with 370min extended diversion time capability.
Comfort zone¶
Fatigue risk management is a crucial part of the operation. Passerini says the ULR is equipped with a specially-designed crew rest, above the forward passenger cabin, adding that this was important to secure the Sunrise mission approval from Australia’s Civil Aviation Safety Authority.
“It allows the pilot an isolated cabin space [with] lighting and temperature control,” he says. “It’s a great space for some recuperative rest. No one else has this, we’ve spent extra on it — it’s beyond what the regulations require.
“We felt strongly, with the two to three rest periods that the pilots will be going through, that we have an area that allows restful sleep and recovery to occur.”
Passenger comfort has also been a priority consideration for the interior cabin configuration.
The four-class 238-seat arrangement will be around 40% premium or premium-economy cabins — but it will still feature 140 economy seats.
Qantas International chief executive Cam Wallace says the Perth-London 787 route has shown that passengers are willing to pay for the convenience of nonstop services.
There has been a “sustained” uplift of 20% unit revenues on the nonstop, compared with the one-stop flights via Singapore, and Qantas expects this to reach 30% on Sydney-London.
Premium cabin unit revenue growth has also outperformed economy, particularly over the last two or three years.
This supports a higher premium cabin mix for the A350-1000ULR compared with the 787 and Airbus A380. Wallace indicates that Qantas is expecting an 85% load factor for the premium cabin on Sydney-London.
The ULR will have six enclosed first-class suites and 52 business suites, plus 40 seats in the eight-abreast premium-economy cabin.
Qantas selected Caon Design Office for the interior configuration. Founder David Caon highlights the challenge having a passenger “for the whole day”, and the need for innovative measures to keep weight down without sacrificing robustness.
Caon says the designers were having to discuss changes to save “a few grammes”, and consider modern curiosities — including whether to fit a small table surface on which passengers could place a champagne glass to photograph for social media.
The aircraft will feature a ‘wellbeing zone’ between the premium-economy and economy cabins. Caon says early concepts considered such additions as exercise bicycles — rapidly discarded — before settling on stretch handles, a guided on-screen movement programme, and a hydration station.
First-class suites have undergone extensive testing to map pressure points, leading to the creation of a memory-foam mattress.
Business-class passengers will also have access to “flexible dining”, says the carrier, allowing them to choose meal times with “scientifically-optimised windows”, while tailored interior lighting — including a progressive sunrise-sunset effect — is all part of the drive to minimise the impact of 22h flights on the circadian rhythm.
Vanessa Hudson says Qantas looked at “thousands” of designs for the configuration, before settling on the heavily-premium four-class layout.
“I think that there is absolutely a customer segment and a marketplace for low-cost carriers,” she says, pointing out that Qantas participates through its Jetstar division.
“But what we’ve also seen, over a minimum of the last decade, is that there has been a growing structural change in the premium market, where customers are increasingly seeking more comfort for a trip — and being prepared to pay that premium.”
Hudson says, however, that there is “absolutely” a demand for point-to-point travel, proven by the Perth-London operation, and a case for nine-abreast economy seating on the ULR.
“It’s about time-saving, but it’s also just about settling in,” she adds. “So we’ve also designed an experience that’s not just about saving four hours. It’s going to be about helping you when you arrive.”
The economy cabin will have three different seat pitches, from 34in — branded as ‘Economy Plus’ — down to 32in, with around 30% of the seats at this lower end.
Rob Marcolina highlights the work Qantas has undertaken to address the customer perspective inside the aircraft, including the wellbeing zone.
“But it doesn’t stop with that,” he says. “Our goal is that we want to be the leaders to minimise jet-lag globally. And that starts, not just with the aircraft, it starts with the lighting, the food, all those small nuances.
“It starts with what you’ll see on the app before and after your flight. We think this is another competitive advantage that will help us.”
Marcolina stresses that Qantas is not abandoning its one-stop intercontinental flights.
“We still have our relationship with Emirates. There will be a portion of the customers in Australia [who’ll] want to stop…so this will be complementary to the one-stop through the Middle East,” he says.
But lopping several hours off a globe-spanning trip is a “big deal”, he adds, and brings the additional benefits of avoiding interruptions.
Gulf reaction¶
Quite how the large Middle East carriers, offering services to Australia through their Gulf hubs, will respond is uncertain.
“The economics of being a midpoint — let’s face it, Gulf super-connector — are pretty compelling,” says consultant Richard Aboulafia, managing director at AeroDynamic Advisory.
“That tends to appeal maybe more to the price-sensitive element of the market, rather than the premium market. But a lot of the growth in demand, and propensity to spend, is at that top end. So it’s going to be a real interesting competitive situation.”
Marcolina states that, after the Perth-London launch, “we saw price, we saw capacity [from competitors] come into Perth”.
“It went away. Because the competitive advantage we have, it’s not just the aircraft. It goes back to the home market strength, premium customers.”
He believes the Middle East carriers “will compete and continue to compete on [a price-focused] basis — so I think it’s complementary [to Sunrise]”.
Introduction of the ULR flights will enable Qantas to restructure its network, freeing up the 787s.
Hudson says the A350 will replace the 787 on the Perth-London route, and indicates that a similar change is planned for Auckland-New York, because the routes are “pushing the limits” of the 787.
She adds that this will allow Qantas to redeploy the 787s on other routes more suited to the aircraft. The airline has long intended to open a Chicago service, but Hudson says the plan has been thwarted three times before.
“We hope, fourth time lucky, that Chicago will be on there,” she says, adding that there are other points in North and South America, as well as southern Africa and Europe, to which the carrier could extend its network.
While supply-chain difficulties — notably with A350 centre fuselage supplier Spirit AeroSystems — have held up A350-1000ULR’s progress, Hudson expects Qantas will receive the initial jet in April next year, and take the first five aircraft in quick succession, at which point Airbus will have caught up with the delivery schedule.
Airbus executive vice-president of commercial aircraft sales Benoit de Saint-Exupery claims to have other “interested customers” for the ULR.
“It’s quite easy to guess who they are, if you look at the geographies,” he says. But he adds that the earliest available slots are in 2030 — long after Sunrise dawns.Subscribe to gain access to all newsAlready have a subscription?Log in.Choose your subscriptionConsidering a corporate subscription?Contact usto find out more.
Subscribe to gain access to all news¶
Already have a subscription?Log in.
Choose your subscription¶
Considering a corporate subscription?Contact usto find out more.
- Tags:
- Archive