Arabic version: كانتاس تختبر طائرة إيرباص في رحلة من تولوز إلى ملبورن

According to The Guardian, Qantas’s new Airbus A350-1000ULR landed in Australia for the first time after a nonstop test flight from Toulouse, France, to Melbourne. The aircraft departed Airbus’s manufacturing facility on Thursday and arrived on Friday after travelling almost 17,000km in just over 19 hours.

The journey drew strong interest from aviation followers. More than 67,000 people tracked the aircraft’s route on flightradar24.com on Friday morning, making it the most-watched flight globally that day. The flight-tracking site showed a 7.33am Thursday departure from Toulouse, local time, and a 10.46am Melbourne arrival, local time.

The A350-1000ULR is being developed for Qantas’s Project Sunrise, including a planned nonstop Sydney-to-London service expected to begin in October 2027. The aircraft is designed to fly for up to 22 hours without stopping. Airbus says an additional 20,000-litre fuel tank gives the model a range of almost 10,000 nautical miles, or 18,500km.

Four Airbus flight-test pilots and five flight-test engineers operated the test. They and the aircraft are due to remain in Melbourne over the weekend before returning to Toulouse on Monday, joined by two Qantas pilots. Qantas chief technical pilot Alex Passerini said the return journey would take 23 hours and would test systems including fuel transfer and air conditioning. Qantas plans to buy 12 of the 238-seat aircraft; the first plane in the airline’s white and red livery, Vega, is expected to be delivered in April 2027.