Longest non-stop flight by an airliner

What to remember

From Melbourne to Toulouse, flying east across North America, an Airbus A350-1000ULR stayed in the air without landing on July 27 and 28, 2026. The trip covered 23,075 km in 24 hours and 24 minutes, with no mid-air refuelling, the condition for this record.

It was a test flight for Qantas' Project Sunrise. On the flight deck, three Airbus test pilots, with Xavier Pepin as captain, shared the work with two Qantas pilots, Andrew Coull and David Summergreene.

Before the A350, the record went through Boeing jets: a 747-400 with 17,039 km in 1989, a 777 with 20,045 km in 1997, then a 777-200LR with 21,601 km in 2005. Between the 1989 mark and the A350's, the distance grew by a ratio of 1.35. The European twin-engine jet, whose prototype first took off from Toulouse on 14 June 2013, is the first Airbus aircraft made largely of carbon-fibre-reinforced polymers. Its extra-wide fuselage gave it the XWB suffix, for eXtra Wide Body.