Airbus yesterday flew the latest variant of its A350 widebody jet from Australia to France, non-stop, on a route that saw it remain aloft for over 24 hours.

The variant is called the A350-1000ULR, which stands for Ultra-Long Range. The plane earns its name thanks to its use of an additional rear center fuel tank that can carry 20,900 liters of fuel capacity. That tank gives the plane a range of almost 10,000 nautical miles, or 18,500km/11,500 miles.

The launch customer for the plane is Australia’s largest airline, Qantas, which wants it so it can fly non-stop from to and from Europe, and to New York. Australia-Europe flights will take up to 22 hours, just two or three hours less than is possible to make the same journey with an intermediate stop.

Qantas thinks there’s a market for the direct route and that passengers will pay a premium for the privilege of remaining in a carbon fiber tube for almost an entire day, instead of stopping to stretch their legs or buy some duty free en route.

Airbus sent the first A350-1000ULR out of the factory and down the runway in June. Several test flights followed, culminating in a 19-hour Toulouse to Melbourne flight that spanned July 23 and 24.

Qantas and Airbus went into PR overdrive after that flight, suggesting it was a decent proof of concept for direct Europe-Australia flights. That conveniently ignored the fact that a week earlier, one of Qantas’ A380s flew nonstop to Sydney from Dresden, Germany.

Dresden is home to one of the few facilities capable of conducting major maintenance on the A380. When Qantas uses it, the airline sends its superjumbos home on a nonstop itinerary but without passengers. The A350-1000ULR carries hardware that simulates the presence of passengers, so is perhaps doing a bit more work than an empty A380.

It’s harder to quibble about the return Melbourne-Toulouse flight, as it lasted 24 hours and 24 minutes, and saw the plane traverse 23,076 km. That’s a distance record for a commercial airliner.

Flightradar24 has data about both flights, here.

Qantas plans to buy a dozen of the long-legged Airbuses, and to use them for daily nonstop flights from Sydney to London and New York – starting in 2027. The carrier plans to pack the planes full of premium seating, with even economy class divided into three distinct offerings – premium economy, economy with extra legroom, and conventional economy, plus a zone dedicated to standing and stretching.

The airline plans special menus, and cunning use of lighting, to make ultra long-haul travel less miserable.

In 2015, your correspondent took what was then the world’s longest commercial flight, a seventeen-hour hop from Dallas to Sydney – and lived to tell the tale. I’ve crossed the Pacific about 20 times since and made it to Europe five or six times too. All that flying led me to devise techniques involving strategic use of over-the-counter sleeping pills and making sure I get outdoors to minimize jet lag – mostly with decent success.

Yet a 22-hour flight seems daunting. Maybe I’ll get to try it one day. ®