Final preparations are under way for Qantas’ London-Sydney nonstop test flight, which is happening the same week as the airline announces its commitment to becoming more sustainable and cutting carbon emissions.
On Thursday 14 November Qantas is making its second ever direct flight between the two cities – the first happened 30 years ago.
In 1989, the plane was a Boeing 747-400 – the first of this extra-long range aircraft delivered for the Australian airline. It had been flown in from the planemaker’s factory in Seattle.
Taking off on the sunny morning of 16 August, the Jumbo jet covered the 10,573 miles from Heathrow to Botany Bay in New South Wales in 20 hours and nine minutes.
The plane, named City of Canberra, is now at a museum near Wollongong, New South Wales.
In 2019, a freshly built Boeing 787-9 “Dreamliner” will be deployed. Like the test flight from 30 years ago, it is being ferried in from Seattle to London. And it will fly with no paying passengers on board.
1/4 Jessica Sundquist: 787 Dreamliner captain at Norwegian
Jessica Sundquist, a Swedish 787 Dreamliner captain for Norwegian, has spoken extensively about being a woman in the industry. In the past she’s spoken about the concept of “putting your femininity aside” in order to succeed.
Sundquist says today that she felt she “didn’t have to do it”, but also wanted to fit into the industry “without being known as ‘the girl’”.
Today, times are changing, she says, and more women are joining the industry – but it’s not all good news. “Despite working hard to get to where I am today as a captain at one of the most modern and exciting airlines, the industry still has a lot more work to do to give women more opportunities,” she says
In the future, she’d like the discussion on gender inequality to remain “open and ongoing”, but argues that real action also needs to take place to make any difference.
Norwegian
2/4 Joanna Riggs: A380 first officer at British Airways
First officer Joanna Riggs says she was never “particularly exposed to aviation as a career choice”, but became a BA cabin crew member after university in order to see more of the world.
She says that entering such a highly male-dominated profession wasn’t daunting, but that she felt “lucky to have two other females” on her course. Colleagues have always been supportive in Riggs’ experience as have – for the most part – passengers, though some are “surprised” when they see a female pilot.
“I hope it will one day be normal to everyone,” she adds. Some passengers give a “thumbs up or a girl power sign”.
As for gender differences on the flight deck, Riggs says, “We are very professional on the flight deck so it doesn’t matter what the gender, race or sexuality of my colleague is.
“Flying with a fellow female is always a treat though. My brother is also a British Airways pilot, and although I haven’t flown with him, I get the feeling we would be very similar.
British Airways
3/4 Lucy Tardrew: Boeing 747 captain at Virgin Atlantic
Lucy Tardrew had always wanted to join the RAF, she says, but it was never allowed to happen – because ”they weren’t taking girls at the time”.
Instead, she travelled to America, where she trained before becoming a flying instructor. After returning to the UK and converting her licences, she began flying night mail – “literally all the posts around the country at night” – before stints flying executive jets, and last-minute jobs including air ambulances and freighting transplant organs, before joining Virgin 23 years ago.
Tardrew is enthusiastic about the company, but is saddened that the ratio of women in the industry as a whole remains low. As for challenges in the workplace, she’s never experienced any discrimination.
Noting the rare pay equality in the piloting industry, Tardrew feels the reason there aren’t more female pilots is down to the fact that ”there aren’t enough female role models for schoolchildren to think, ‘I’m going to become an airline pilot’.”
Virgin Atlantic
4/4 Kate McWilliams: captain at easyJet
At 26, Kate McWilliams became the youngest commercial captain in the world.
“I love being a captain for easyJet,” she says. “And I’m really happy to be working for an airline that is working hard to increase the number of female pilots.”
Flying was always her goal – but she didn’t realise how far she could take it. “I joined the air cadets at 13-years-old, but it wasn’t until much later that I realised I could become a commercial pilot,” she says.
“EasyJet is aiming to inspire young women, with the Amy Johnson Flying Initiative and their sponsorship of the Brownies, giving girls aged seven to 10 the opportunity to earn an Aviation Badge. The work it’s doing is really important.”
The Amy Johnson Flying Initiative was launched in October 2015 with the aim of doubling the number of female new entrant pilots, to 12 per cent, over a two-year period.
After achieving its aim in the first year, the airline set a target of 20 per cent for new entrant cadet pilots in 2020.
easyJet
1/4 Jessica Sundquist: 787 Dreamliner captain at Norwegian
Jessica Sundquist, a Swedish 787 Dreamliner captain for Norwegian, has spoken extensively about being a woman in the industry. In the past she’s spoken about the concept of “putting your femininity aside” in order to succeed.
Sundquist says today that she felt she “didn’t have to do it”, but also wanted to fit into the industry “without being known as ‘the girl’”.
Today, times are changing, she says, and more women are joining the industry – but it’s not all good news. “Despite working hard to get to where I am today as a captain at one of the most modern and exciting airlines, the industry still has a lot more work to do to give women more opportunities,” she says
In the future, she’d like the discussion on gender inequality to remain “open and ongoing”, but argues that real action also needs to take place to make any difference.
Norwegian
2/4 Joanna Riggs: A380 first officer at British Airways
First officer Joanna Riggs says she was never “particularly exposed to aviation as a career choice”, but became a BA cabin crew member after university in order to see more of the world.
She says that entering such a highly male-dominated profession wasn’t daunting, but that she felt “lucky to have two other females” on her course. Colleagues have always been supportive in Riggs’ experience as have – for the most part – passengers, though some are “surprised” when they see a female pilot.
“I hope it will one day be normal to everyone,” she adds. Some passengers give a “thumbs up or a girl power sign”.
As for gender differences on the flight deck, Riggs says, “We are very professional on the flight deck so it doesn’t matter what the gender, race or sexuality of my colleague is.
“Flying with a fellow female is always a treat though. My brother is also a British Airways pilot, and although I haven’t flown with him, I get the feeling we would be very similar.
British Airways
3/4 Lucy Tardrew: Boeing 747 captain at Virgin Atlantic
Lucy Tardrew had always wanted to join the RAF, she says, but it was never allowed to happen – because ”they weren’t taking girls at the time”.
Instead, she travelled to America, where she trained before becoming a flying instructor. After returning to the UK and converting her licences, she began flying night mail – “literally all the posts around the country at night” – before stints flying executive jets, and last-minute jobs including air ambulances and freighting transplant organs, before joining Virgin 23 years ago.
Tardrew is enthusiastic about the company, but is saddened that the ratio of women in the industry as a whole remains low. As for challenges in the workplace, she’s never experienced any discrimination.
Noting the rare pay equality in the piloting industry, Tardrew feels the reason there aren’t more female pilots is down to the fact that ”there aren’t enough female role models for schoolchildren to think, ‘I’m going to become an airline pilot’.”
Virgin Atlantic
4/4 Kate McWilliams: captain at easyJet
At 26, Kate McWilliams became the youngest commercial captain in the world.
“I love being a captain for easyJet,” she says. “And I’m really happy to be working for an airline that is working hard to increase the number of female pilots.”
Flying was always her goal – but she didn’t realise how far she could take it. “I joined the air cadets at 13-years-old, but it wasn’t until much later that I realised I could become a commercial pilot,” she says.
“EasyJet is aiming to inspire young women, with the Amy Johnson Flying Initiative and their sponsorship of the Brownies, giving girls aged seven to 10 the opportunity to earn an Aviation Badge. The work it’s doing is really important.”
The Amy Johnson Flying Initiative was launched in October 2015 with the aim of doubling the number of female new entrant pilots, to 12 per cent, over a two-year period.
After achieving its aim in the first year, the airline set a target of 20 per cent for new entrant cadet pilots in 2020.
easyJet
The trip is being described as an “ultra long-haul research flight to gather new data about inflight passenger and crew health and wellbeing”. This looks a contentious claim. Qantas already has every opportunity to conduct in-depth research on the effects of very long flights with hundreds of subjects on its daily Perth-to-Heathrow nonstop flight, which is scheduled to take almost 18 hours.
The London-Sydney flight is likely to take only two hours longer, and will not allow researchers to conduct real-world tests on a flight with a full complement of passengers.
Also, any commercial flight on the route will certainly not leave at 6am, the departure time scheduled for the Qantas test flight, so tests to measure fatigue will not be wholly helpful.
Qantas calls its plan for nonstop flights connecting Sydney with both London and New York “Project Sunrise”. Scheduled flights are expected to start by 2022, if Airbus or Boeing can supply a suitable aircraft – either the A350 or 777X respectively.
The first nonstop three decades ago was carefully planned, using special fuel with high energy density. The tanks were topped up at the holding point at Heathrow, just before take-off, because during the taxi the plane used nearly one ton of fuel – roughly what was left in the tanks when it touched down.
While the 747 used around 180 tons of fuel on the original trip, the twin-engined Dreamliner will burn around half as much.
Qantas staged a similar ultra-long-haul journey in October 2019, from New York to Sydney. It was widely misreported as “the longest-ever commercial flight,” even though it was not commercial and the 1989 flight was around 1,000 miles further.
Qantas has this week also announced a “major expansion of the airline’s commitment to a more sustainable aviation industry”.
The Australian airline has promised net zero emissions by 2050, starting by capping net emissions from 2020. Qantas will also invest A$50m (£26.6m) to help develop a sustainable aviation fuel industry.
“In total, these commitments are the most ambitious carbon emissions targets of any airline group globally,” the carrier says.
The Qantas Group chief executive, Alan Joyce, said: “These short-term actions will go towards a longer-term goal of being completely net carbon neutral by 2050. It’s ambitious, but achievable.
“Concerns about emissions and climate change are real, but we can’t lose sight of the contribution that air travel makes to society and the economy. The industry has already come a long way in cutting its footprint and the solution from here isn’t to simply ‘fly less’ but to make it more sustainable.”
Climate-change campaigners have deplored the Qantas nonstop flights. Anna Hughes, director of Flight Free UK, said: “At this time of climate emergency we should be investing our ingenuity and engineering in lower carbon methods of long-haul travel.
“These flight experiments are unnecessary and irresponsible.”
Airbus has also seen its aircraft flown extreme distances by Qantas. On Christmas Eve 2003, an A330 was delivered direct from the factory in Toulouse in southwest France to Sydney, covering 10,507 miles.
