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Qantas Airways will place an order for ultra long-range planes from Airbus or Boeing next year, starting the clock for the two manufacturers to win over the airline. The planes, which must be able to fly from Sydney to London or New York without a break with a full payload, will be delivered in 2022, CE Alan Joyce said Monday. Project Sunrise, as the airline calls it, would put Rio de Janeiro, Cape Town, New York or Paris within direct reach of Australia’s eastern seaboard, according to Qantas. The airline, started a Perth to London 17-hour service using a Boeing 787 Dreamliner this year. “All things are on the table as we work through the development phase,” Alison Webster, head of Qantas’s international business, said. Qantas is having “intense and detailed” talks with both planemakers, she said. <br/>

Qantas said it will not launch new international long-haul services from Australia’s Perth Airport until a dispute with the airport has been resolved. Qantas wanted to introduce a seasonal Perth-Johannesburg route, but the airport would not agree to the airline’s request regarding terminal use. As a result, the airline has shelved a plan for this route, Qantas executives said. In addition, the airline will not announce any more ultra-long-haul flights from Perth to Europe unless the airport meets its request on terminal use, Qantas CE Alan Joyce said. Joyce said he has written to Perth airport to express his concerns about the terminal issue, and is scheduled to meet the airport chairperson “soon. Until this is resolved, we won’t expand [internationally] from Perth,” he said. <br/>

Qantas Airways said it plans to change its website to refer to Taiwan as a Chinese territory, not an independent nation, but that it needed extra time to comply with the request from Beijing. China's aviation regulator in April gave 3 dozen airlines a May 25 deadline to remove references on their websites or in other material that suggest Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macau are part of countries independent from China, a move described by White House as "Orwellian nonsense". Qantas and some other airlines had requested at the time for an extension to decide how they would respond to the request. The CE of Qantas' international unit, Alison Webster, said the decision was not influenced by Qantas' partnership with China Eastern Airlines. "I don't think the relationship makes any difference to how we review our response," Webster said. <br/>

Qantas’ fleet of A330 aircraft has been stretched to cover services over the past few days after 2 of the twin-aisle plane types suffered engine and flight control faults. And in a sign of the pressure on crewing, a Qantas 747-400 jumbo bound for the Chilean capital of Santiago from Sydney with a full load of passengers narrowly avoided being cancelled Sunday when a replacement for a sick pilot was found in the nick of time. “Scheduling is desperately seeking a first officer or suitably qualified [right-hand seat] captain to crew the QF27,” a Qantas manager of base operations wrote in an “urgent request” to pilots fewer than 3 hours before the jumbo was due to depart Sydney. While a sign of strong demand for flights, pilots say the airline’s high utilisation of aircraft is placing pressure on crewing. <br/>

Japan Airlines hopes to expand the fleet of a new LCC by 2 jets a year after it launches in mid-2020, a director of the airline said Monday, as it takes on rival ANA's budget arm Peach. "In the case of Japan Airlines we can introduce 5 or 6 aircraft a year based on our size. Maybe 2 aircraft a year is very challenging for a new airline but we hope they can expand at that kind of pace," said JAL director Masaru Onishi. The new airline, which will offer medium and long-haul flights, will be designed to cater to a broad group of Japanese and foreign passengers and will take a more experimental approach to its product than the full-service parent carrier, Onishi, a former chairman of JAL, said. The yet-to-be-named carrier will offer a mix of budget and premium options for meals and seats, depending on what passengers are willing to pay. <br/>

An American Airlines plane made an emergency landing after hail damaged the windshield and caused some passengers to throw up. One of the pilots said they could barely see through the windshield. The airline says no injuries were reported after the Sunday night flight from San Antonio, Texas, to Phoenix ran into bad weather over New Mexico and turned south to land in El Paso, Texas. There were 130 passengers and 5 crew members on board. Another plane finished the trip to Phoenix a few hours later. An airline spokesman said Monday that the plane was awaiting repairs for damage to the nose, windshield panels and a cockpit side window. He said the engines, including the fan blades, were not damaged. A passenger stated he saw lightning and hail and the plane dropped "like a rollercoaster." <br/>