Aviation

The Airbus A350-1000ULR to be used on the routes will spend 70-75% of the year — particularly in the northern hemisphere summer — operating the conventional westbound flightpaths over the Middle East region.

But Qantas chief technical pilot Alex Passerini says the airline aims to use a “new and novel” route out of Sydney in the winter.

This would involve flying north across the Pacific, flying east of Japan and over northern Alaska, skirting just south of the North Pole, before heading south over Scotland to approach London from the north.

“The advantage of this is, obviously, the airspace constraints are a lot less,” says Passerini.