Qantas Faces Fresh Delay In A350-1000ULR Arrival

Qantas has confirmed its first A350-1000ULR delivery will slip to April 2027, four months later than the previously expected late 2026 date, due to Airbus supply chain disruptions. The next four aircraft are expected to follow in quick succession, with Qantas aiming to restore its original schedule by November 2027. 

For a programme that was first expected to launch in 2023, another delay stings differently.

A Decade in the Making, Still Waiting

Project Sunrise has been pushed back repeatedly, first by COVID, then by the post-pandemic aerospace supply crunch, and now by production bottlenecks at Airbus that have rippled across the industry since 2020. Qantas ordered 12 A350-1000ULRs in May 2022 and had expected to bring the type into commercial service by mid-2027, a target that now requires everything else to go exactly to plan from April onward. 

The aircraft itself is nearly ready. The first airframe is already in the paint shop at Airbus's Toulouse facility and is expected to begin test flights within weeks, with pilot training already underway at a new A350 simulator in Sydney. The delay is not about the plane, it is about the parts that go into building it.

What This Aircraft Actually Has to Do

The A350-1000ULR carries an additional 20,000-litre fuel tank installed at the rear, giving it the range to cover nearly 10,000 nautical miles nonstop, roughly 22 hours in the air, connecting Sydney directly to both London Heathrow and New York JFK. That is not a marginal improvement on existing routes. Sydney to London currently routes through hubs in Asia or the Middle East, adding hours and a connection to every journey. Project Sunrise removes all of that. When these services finally launch, passengers will save up to four hours off the journey compared to current options.

Qantas needs three aircraft in service before it can run a daily nonstop on either route, which means the April delivery is not the start of operations, it is just the beginning of the runway to get there. 

The Route Announcement Is Still Coming

Despite the delay, Qantas is not standing still. The airline confirmed it will announce the first route and timing of inaugural commercial services next month, meaning the destination question between London and New York is about to be answered publicly for the first time. That announcement will land before the aircraft does, which is either confident or optimistic depending on how Airbus's production line performs between now and April.

Project Sunrise has been delayed before and survived. The question now is whether the supply chain cooperates long enough to finally let it fly.