Qantas’ Project Sunrise could be the Concorde in reverse

June 19, 2026 — 3:50am

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Designed in the space-age 1960s, the Concorde was a boundary-pushing supersonic aircraft.

By the time it launched in 1976, public frustration with pollution – including noise pollution – made Concorde’s sonic booms decidedly unpopular. The cost and the uproar over sonic booms limited Concorde’s utility to primarily flying over oceans – from New York to London, for example – and it became a niche product, until it was forever grounded in 2003.

It’s possible that Qantas’ Project Sunrise could follow a similar trajectory, but in reverse – starting niche and then finding a broader market.

When announced in 2017, a 22-hour, single point-to-point flight seemed a novelty, solving a somewhat non-existent problem: the need to fly from Sydney to London without mucking around with stopovers.

Then, the conflict in the Middle East erupted this........

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