24 hours and 24 minutes: Qantas broke the record for the longest flight for a passenger aircraft

The Australian airline Qantas has completed the longest flight ever performed by a commercial passenger aircraft, lasting 24 hours and 24 minutes. For this flight, which generated significant interest on online flight-tracking websites, the company utilized an Airbus A350 with no passengers on board.

Airbus stated that the aircraft, equipped with an additional 20,000-liter fuel tank, remained in the air for 24 hours and 24 minutes, covering a distance of 23,075 km over the Pacific and Atlantic oceans without stopping. It landed at the company's factory in Toulouse in southwestern France. This is considered the longest flight ever by a commercial aircraft, surpassing the previous record of 22 hours and 42 minutes, set in 2005 by a Boeing 777-200LR.

"This was the longest flight ever made by an Airbus aircraft. We are now reviewing the data with the relevant authorities to determine if the flight broke a record," a company spokesperson said.

The flight is part of the airline's Project Sunrise, under which it will use new aircraft to perform continuous flights from Australia to London. This route will officially enter service next year, and the company has been conducting test flights ahead of the official launch for the past two months. For instance, last week the aircraft flew from Toulouse to Melbourne in just under 19 hours.

Qantas has ordered 12 aircraft of this type to facilitate efforts to connect the east coast of Australia to London and New York in 20 hours. Qantas hopes to operate daily flights between Sydney and London starting in October 2027.

The flight tracking site, Flightradar24, stated that this is the second most-watched flight on its channels, following the flight that carried the coffin of Queen Elizabeth in 2022, which was tracked by more than 3.6 million people.