By Barnaby "Bottom-Line" Coyne
For decades, flying from New York to Sydney has meant a stop somewhere — Los Angeles, Auckland, Dallas, someplace to stretch your legs and swap planes before the long haul resumes. Qantas says that's about to change.
The Australian carrier plans to begin selling tickets next year for a nonstop flight connecting New York and Sydney, according to CNBC. It's the kind of route that sits at the edge of what current aircraft can do — roughly 10,000 miles of ocean and continent with no runway in between.
For Qantas, the payoff is competitive: a direct route skips the delays, layover costs and lost time that come with connections, and it lets the airline sell a premium product to travelers and corporate accounts willing to pay for the convenience of one long day in the air instead of two shorter ones with a layover in between.
CNBC's report does not detail pricing, aircraft type, flight frequency or exact launch dates — those specifics aren't yet public, and travelers weighing whether to wait for this route rather than book a connecting flight should treat next year's on-sale date as the first real test of what Qantas can deliver.
Ultra-long-haul routes are notoriously expensive to fly and slow to turn a profit; airlines have launched and quietly cut similar marathon routes before when the economics didn't hold up. Whether this one sticks will depend on fuel costs, demand from business travelers, and a fare structure that hasn't been announced yet.
Somebody's paying for this. Let's find out who.
— Compiled from reporting by CNBC.
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