- Qantas nonstop research flight from London to Sydney,
here I come.
And we will see double sunrise today.
- We will see double sunrise today.
Hi five.
- In 1919, 100 years ago, it used to took 28 days
from U.K. to Australia.
Beautiful, this is the magic moment of the day.
- Trying to stretch to the locker.
- Sitting can be exercise, as well.
Can you show me the sitting exercise?
You could even take up more passenger.
Everything on this plane is actually special.
I think I'm gonna lose some weight after landing.
We need to adjust our body clock to Sydney's time.
So this is supper right now.
- I'd like to share with you
something very close to my heart.
- The A350 or the 777X,
what is your favourite aircraft, Alan?
These are the typical Australian outback landscape.
This is such a history making flight.
(crowd cheering) Yay!
(upbeat music)
- Welcome aboard our nonstop flight
through to Sydney today.
We'll be boarding from gate number one just after 5:00 a.m.
And that one's there for yourself today.
So when you're ready, you can head through security.
- Thank you. - Thank you very much.
- Take care. - Enjoy.
- Project Sunrise, here we come.
(upbeat music)
- Welcome aboard our special advising act
on this morning's nonstop flight
from London Heathrow to Sydney, Australia.
- [Group] Sydney!
- Thank you very much, guys.
Good luck.
Thank you.
Bye now.
- Good on you, thanks.
See you next time.
- Enjoy your flight. - Thank you, thank you.
- Thank you. - Thank you.
Hey, good morning!
Overcoming the final frontier of aviation,
Qantas nonstop research flight from London to Sydney,
here I come.
- See ya soon, bye! - Bye, take care.
- Hello, welcome aboard.
- [Sam] Hello, hello.
Good morning, good morning.
- Good morning, welcome aboard.
- [Sam] We're making history today.
- Absolutely, aviation history.
- [Sam] Nonstop to Australia, let's go!
- Double sunrise, bring it on.
- Departing London today, 19 hours and 17 minutes.
Darkness when we depart, bright sunshine
in Sydney when we land.
- [Sam] And we will see double sunrise today.
- We will see double sunrise today.
- [Sam] Just a history making, hi five, Captain.
- Hi five.
(upbeat music)
- Now, it's 5:40 a.m.
I'm sitting in seat 8A,
and look at the pillow here.
It says Qantas Research Flights.
- [Attendant] Thanks very much, London.
We'll see you when we come back next time.
Thank you.
- Bye! - Bye!
- We have to do the final door has now closed.
- Let's go.
- [Announcer] If your seat is fitted
with a sash belt, ensure.
From the pouch by pulling the tab.
- Mind if I just pull this over for you?
- Oh, yes, I forgot the shoulder strap.
- Yeah, it's a safety precaution, so like a car seat.
- Oh, like a car seats, yes.
Thank you very much.
- There you go.
It'll stop you from. - All secure.
- [Attendant] Not that you're gonna need it at all.
- Thank you.
So the time now is 6:00 a.m.
So we pushed back a few minutes early.
We're heading towards the end of runway 27 Left
for departure, and as you can see,
it's still pitch dark and slightly with rain.
(engines whirring)
There we have just a takeoff.
19 hours, 17 minutes to Australia nonstop.
In 1919, 100 years ago, it used to took 28 days
from U.K. to Australia.
So today, that's 19 hours we'll get there.
And today's flights, we'll be over flying
the following countries from England to Netherlands,
Germany, Poland, Belarus, Russia, Kazakhstan,
China, Philippines, Indonesia and on to Australia.
- Hi there, sir. - Hello there.
- I've just got the menu for you,
and there's also a little bit of information
in here about the flight, as well.
- [Sam] Thank you very much.
- This historic event.
There you go.
- [Sam] Thank you.
- Sam, on this flight, we've locked the windows closed
in the forward two sections where our customers are sitting
because we had a trial on this flight
for the Charles Perkins method of getting everyone
onto the time zone in Sydney.
So if you've like to look out the window
at the first sunrise, you'll be able to do that
from the cabins further back.
- [Captain] This is the Captain.
My name is Helen Trenerry.
Also on the flight deck, First Officer Ryan Gill,
Second Officer Chris Agnew, and Second Officer Tegan Grey.
So in honour of your place in this epic adventure,
we acknowledge the personnel who took part
in the top secret Double Sunrise Flights
that Qantas conducted during World War II.
These flights were under constant threat of attack
from the Japanese and would fly for up to 32 hours nonstop.
The crew and their passengers would see two sunrises
on their flights, giving them the title
of the Double Sunrise Flights.
Today as we've departed London
in the wee, small hours of darkness,
the first of our two sunrises is just about to occur
on the horizon to our east now.
- Beautiful, this is the magic moment of the day,
the first sunrise we saw on this flight,
just about 40 minutes after it took off
and as we're flying towards the east.
Most passenger in the front cabin on this flight,
they will acclimatise to Sydney time zone,
which is actually now in the evening at 5:45 local time.
(door snapping)
I'm all changed into a very comfy,
very recognisable pyjama, the big, flying kangaroo.
But this is not just a normal Qantas pyjama,
something special.
Let me show you why.
It's a Qantas research special pyjama.
Here, let's do a refill.
I was drinking a lot of water on this flight.
- Stay hydrated.
(gentle music)
- This is great.
Every airline should do this.
This is a great idea, saving the planet.
If you are a traveller, bring your water bottle
instead of using that plastic bottle.
- We'd like to do a bit of exercise, very simple things.
So it's really going to give you a bit of boost
in terms of oxygen in the body,
and it's going, as well, to help all of the blood flow
to come back.
So the first one is going to just natural walking.
So just natural walking.
(gentle music)
just stretch the side of the body.
So try not to go too much on the side.
Trying to stretch to the locker,
and you can be on your toes.
So you are here on your toes.
Just gentle, okay?
It's not a competition.
Five times.
Now what we're going to do is stretching
the ischial muscle here and the calves,
which are the other one
that are compressed when we are sitting for a long time.
So you can lift this one leg.
(gentle music)
One, two, three.
Six, seven, eight,
nine, 10.
(group cheering) (group applauding)
- [Sam] How do you feel after exercising?
- Oh, invigorated.
I don't know if I could do it twice, though.
- [Sam] Were you able to, squatting all the way
to Sydney, 19 hours.
- So what we recommend at the moment
is two different types of exercise.
One is the sitting exercise.
So there's a number of movement people can still do
while sitting in the seat.
- Sitting can be exercise, as well.
- Absolutely, we can just imagine some exercise.
- Can you show me the sitting exercise?
So you're raising yours heels.
- Yeah, and contracting the calf muscle.
And this one, there's the other one
where you raise the toes.
- Raising toes on the front.
- And you can do upper body exercise, as well.
So you can do squeezing, for example, squeezing.
You can do stretching one side.
You can do the other side.
Turn. - Ah, you can turn, as well.
- You can lift yourself.
- [Sam] Left yourself, oh, yes.
- So there's a lot of things,
and once people feel empowered to do it,
then they will find the exercise they like.
- What we're wearing today is am active watch
on our nondominant hands, and this is 24-hour monitor,
and we'll be wearing those for about 21 days.
It's got the light metre in it, as well,
but it's gonna also looking at every movement we make.
It gets downloaded to computers,
and then they'll be able to assess our times of rest
and our times of movement.
Here is also another light metre
because they need to assess the light
that goes into our eyes.
So we need to wear this somewhere between our eyes
and our chest, and it's doing a continuous monitoring
of the light going into our eyes
because that affects the melatonin levels that we produce.
Now, Helen, can you tell me how much fuel uplifted
from London to do this nonstop to Sydney?
- In the flight plan, we needed 100 tonnes of fuel today.
The takeoff weight for the aeroplane is nearly 235 tonnes.
So that's 235,000 kilogrammes.
When we get to Sydney, we'll be landing
at about 137,000 kilogrammes.
So we'll burn a fair bit of the fuel on the way,
but we're running a very fuel efficient flight today,
and we've got a lot of computers
and performance engineers monitoring our fuel flow.
- You could even take up more passenger.
- We could've taken more today, yeah.
We had about 20,000 kilos below our maximum takeoff weight.
So we had a bit more room for a few bodies,
but we couldn't get anybody in the terminal aboard.
- All right, I guess it's too late now
for everyone to hop on.
We already took off.
Well, thank you very much, Helen.
- You're welcome, Sam.
- You can see the entire economy class behind me is empty,
and also the premium economy's also empty.
All the guests and passenger are sitting
in the front of the plane.
Now, that creates lots of room
for people to walk down here to do those exercise,
stretching when they needed to.
And also, Qantas is telling me
if the Project Sunrise will be launched
and the new aeroplane will get chosen,
the economy class will be a far roomier experience
on the extra long haul flights like this.
Everything on this flight is actually special
and researched, even the food were specially customised
made for this flight to promote a better wellbeing.
- So here we've got the roasted chicken broth
with shiitake mushrooms, enoki, sugar snaps, and peas.
This is a high protein meal
with the high GI carbohydrate that's in the macaroni,
and that's gonna help to put everyone to sleep.
Comfort food encouraging the production
of serotonin and melatonin.
- Very healthy flight.
There's no Coke, no Sprite, no soft drinks.
- No caffeine.
- Only the coconut water or this one called kombucha.
And no spirits onboard, as well.
So it's entirely a very healthy flight.
I think I'm gonna lose some weight after landing.
Nice, white bread.
- [Attendant] Yeah, it's special GI bread,
which aids in sleep.
- How's that for a nice, healthy looking soup?
- [Sam] Wow, a soup for breakfast, that's great,
- Supper. - Supper.
- [Attendant] It's actually supper.
- [Sam] This is a supper now, you're right.
- [Attendant] In Sydney, it's supper time.
- We need to adjust our body clock to Sydney's time.
So this is supper right now.
- So this is the main course, the steak sandwich
with some roasted tomatoes,
and this is to help support the sleep cycle
for our passengers.
- Steak sandwich, sir.
- Thank you very much.
- There you go.
And one for you, as well, sir.
- Thank you very much.
- Enjoy.
- This is the vanilla rose cream
with strawberries and pistachio and a strawberry jelly.
And this is a milk based dessert.
So something that people traditionally give their kids
when they put them off to sleep is a warm bottle of milk,
and this is our version of a warm bottle of milk.
It's not warm, but it's a lovely,
delicious, lightly sweetened.
- [Adrienne] So it's best to have the seat.
- [Sam] Oh, this is a mattress.
Oh, very nice, very soft, very plush.
- [Adrienne] It's thick.
So it's best to have the seat up front
before you put them on.
- [Sam] Oh, it's a cover.
- [Adrienne] So it covers right over,
and if you need to put your sash belt on it,
it's got the.
- [Sam] Oh, I see.
- Special spot there for it to come through,
but you don't need that on during flight.
So it means you can have this on
for takeoff and landing, as well,
which is good for customers who wanna go to sleep.
With our.
- [Sam] Thank you.
- Now you're set for bed.
Night night, sleeping time.
Time for us to turn the lights out.
(gentle music)
- I just woke up.
We're now halfway between London and Sydney,
about 9-1/2 hour to go.
Just coming to the galley, doing some exercise, stretching.
- Now, on a traditional flight,
we'd have a large selection of snacks
and items to choose from,
total weight of 1.5 tonnes for business class
with food and equipment,
but on this flight today,
because of the length and nature of the flight,
we're limited to 900 kilos.
- Weighs our watches, which look like a '84 Casio.
However, they're actually quite technological,
and they're quite advanced.
So they measure the amount of light
that's coming into them.
We also have alertness testing.
So during the flight at several different intervals,
we check how alert we are by using an exercise
on the iPad to test how quickly we respond
to a set of data.
Outside of that, we also keep a sleep diary,
which shows how well we sleep.
- Six hours to land in Sydney.
Now the cabin light has been turned on again.
It is breakfast time in Sydney,
and we've just been served a piccolo latte
to wake up and stimulate the palette for breakfast.
I had a pretty good sleep, six hours sleep,
and then I did some exercise, enjoyed a movie,
aboriginal movie called "Jedda".
It was 1955 movie, and then I did some work,
(dinging) writing up the blog
and about this flight.
And so all the details will be shared with you
(dinging) in the upcoming video
and on my blog.
So there are actually quite a few passenger on this flight
doing the reaction test and under research,
and here I met David.
- [David] It's a reaction time machine.
Soon as the numbers start timing down,
you've gotta push the button.
And at the end, it gives you a total score
of how well you did.
- [Sam] Oh, so it's testing your reaction.
As soon as number hit a screen, you tap.
- [David] Yep, and it goes for 10 minutes,
and it changes duration, so it gets very frustrating
after 10 minutes.
- [Sam] So sometimes fast, sometimes slow.
- [David] Yeah, try it.
- [Sam] I think, David, you're pretty good at this.
- Oh, yeah, I'm getting very good.
Practise makes perfect.
- So this is the healthy breakfast bowl,
and it's full of roasted cauliflower
with a spicy harissa dressing, a poached egg,
and some watercress, and the idea of this
is to go along with the wake up cycle.
That's what we use the spicy harissa dressing for.
- Mr. Jones, a breakfast for you.
- Good morning.
- [Attendant] Sorry to have kept you waiting.
- [David] No, it's okay.
- [Attendant] You eat them all.
- I could eat all this.
(attendant chuckling)
- Now that magic moment is gonna start again.
Shortly we're gonna see the double sunrise,
the second sunrise on this flight.
We're over Ambon, Indonesia at 41,000 feet at the moment,
about five hours to Sydney from now on.
- [Captain] At this point now at the left side
of the aircraft, you'll see your second sunrise.
And now we are all members
of the rare and special Secret Order of the Double Sunrise
and trailblazers for Project Sunrise.
A century ago, the Australian government
challenged the world's leading aviators
to fly from Great Britain to Australia
in less than 30 days.
Brothers Captain Ross Smith, and Lieutenant Keith Smith
and their mechanics, Sergeants Wally Shiers,
and Jim Bennett took off
in their modified Vickers Vimy bomber
from snow covered Hounslow Aerodrome in West London
on the morning of November 12th, 1919.
Some 135 hours of actual flying time later,
on the 10th of December, the four touched down
at Fannie Bay in the Northern Territory of Australia
near Darwin and shared a prize of 10,000 pounds.
Their flight is considered one
of the world's great pioneering aviation feats,
and today we replicate that challenge
in a flying machine they could never have imagined
and just on 19 hours of flying time.
- Hey, Sam, my name's Chris Agnew,
one of the second officers
on board QF7879 from London to Sydney,
and I'd like to share with you something very close
to my heart.
It's a picture of my grandfather that,
he used to fly during the Second World War
as a air-sea rescue pilot up in Papua, New Guinea.
I carry it with me in my jacket pocket
'cause I know how proud of me he was as a pilot,
and unfortunately he only passed away a couple
of months ago, so he just missed out
on hearing about the news
that I was conducting this flight.
- Wow, Chris, that was so inspiring.
I'm sure your grandfather's very, very proud of you.
- Thanks. - So Chris,
what's this thing you're holding with you?
- So this here is a brainwave monitor.
We are required to wear it
at all times when we're on the flight deck.
So it actually just sits on our foreheads
just behind our ears on both side.
Designed so that our headset can sit on our ears comfortably
and the microphone boom in front of our mouth
without any hindrance.
It measures our brainwave activities.
- Alan, I want to ask you
which aircraft you think is more likely,
the A350 or the 777X?
- So it's gonna be pretty close.
We've got both aircraft still in competition.
We're talking to both manufacturers.
Both have pros and cons.
So this will come down to the line.
It's gonna be to the very last minute
before we'll make a call.
- Okay, do you think you will make that call?
- So our intent is by the end of this calendar year,
which is only a few weeks away,
that way we will be making a decision
on whether we do Sunrise or not.
- Oh, so there's a chance Sunrise may not even happen?
- There is.
I mean we've still got a few hurdles to overcome.
The reason why we're doing these test flights
is to get our regulator to allow us,
to make sure we're comfortable,
we're having a tour of duty
that can do a 21 hour flight, which you can't do today.
We're also talking to our unions
about changing the employment contract
to allow them to do it,
and we're also looking at what the product looks like
and the final economic case.
And then it has to pass the economic hurdles
that we've set for it.
And if it does pass that,
then you'll probably see Sunrise happening by 2023.
- The last question, as an av geek,
we always wanna know what is your favourite aircraft, Alan?
- My favourite aircraft is the Boeing 747,
and that's because.
You agree with me?
- I agree.
My favourite plane is the 747.
Please tell me more.
- That's 'cause Qantas has a big history,
as you're probably aware.
Next year, we'll have flown every series of the aircraft
for 49 years, the 747-100, 200, the 300s,
the SPs, the 400s, the 400ERs, and the -8s as a freighter.
So it's a piece of history.
But unfortunately we are retiring them next year.
So it's going to be a very bittersweet moment
'cause we're replacing them
with super efficient aircraft like this,
but they are still in some ways, I think,
the queen of the sky.
- I wanna share with you some personal story.
When I was 13 year old, I went on a Qantas flight
from Sydney to Melbourne, Qantas 9, 747-400,
the first leg before you're onward to Singapore and London,
and I was a kid at the back.
And the flight attendant saw me.
Within a few minute, they call me
and they took me upstairs to the cockpit,
and I had the fortune to sit behind the pilots
to observe my very first jump seats takeoff in the cockpit.
Something not to tell the regulator
is my hand was underneath the captain's hand,
and we were pushing the throttle on the 747-400
on the engine during the takeoff.
So it was remarkable.
I think this aeroplane shapes the love of aviation
for many people, including myself.
- That's a great story.
- Guys, I have Richard Quest here
on this history making Qantas 787 nonstop flight.
How's the flight so far?
- I'm impressed at how well I'm feeling,
and I think partly it's because of the excitement,
people like yourself on board.
Everybody's walking around.
Everybody's gossiping.
Everybody's chitchatting about aviation.
But also, there aren't 200 people in the back.
So there isn't the same humanity.
There isn't the same movement around,
carts going up and down, although there are in some cases.
And there isn't just that same feeling
of pressure and crowding us.
I'm feeling pretty good.
We are now, by the way,
we have just crossed Northern Australia,
there at the top.
- [Sam] Oh, we're already in Australia?
- Yep, we're over there now.
We haven't actually crossed the main,
but this looks like it actually connected, but.
There is the Australia coast out there.
- [Sam] Wow, excellent.
Thank you so much, Richard. - Sure.
- [Captain] We are passing Longreach
out of the left-hand side of the aircraft.
It's approximately 131 nautical miles away.
That's 150 statute miles.
The town is the middle of centre
of Central Queensland out there.
Have a good look.
It's in the distance.
It'll be very hard to see.
It's quite a small town.
This particular aircraft has been named Longreach
in a nod to this Queensland town
that was integral to our beginnings.
Just for your information now,
we have less than two hours to run.
It's look like a touchdown time of 12:28 p.m. into Sydney,
and we are currently 1,800 kilos of fuel
ahead of where we should be.
So that's a saving of 1,800 kilos
due to all the fuel optimization techniques
we've utilising in the aircraft.
Hope you've had a great night with us.
We'll be getting busy shortly as we plan
and commence our descent into Sydney.
It's gonna be a spectacular arrival.
It's a gorgeous day there, sunny conditions.
We've turned it on for you.
It'll be very pleasant.
- Hello, Sam, welcome to the club of the Double Sunrise.
- Oh, thank you. - Very, small, elite club
you have no joined. - This is great.
Thank you very much.
Look at this.
- [Attendant] So this is the original replica
of the certificate they used to issue
back when the Flight Boat services started.
- [Sam] Oh, the original this is replicating, oh, wow.
- [Attendant] Then on the other side,
you've got the new one. - The new one.
- [Attendant] This is the contemporary one.
- Well, we are just about an hour and a little bit more
until we arrive in Sydney.
I think you can recognise these
are the typical Australian outback landscape.
The meal I had at lunch was phenomenal.
It was a great dish, a pasta with a beef ragu.
- [Captain] Our draught today, inbound towards Sydney
from the west.
We're going to do a right turn
just before we reach Sydney city itself,
take it down towards the south
for a series of left turns and then landing
on runway 34, then towards the north.
Touchdown time at this stage looks like 12:28.
We'd like to take this opportunity to thank you
for accompanying us today on such a special trip.
It's been an epic adventure for all of us.
We look forward to catching up with you on the ground
and enjoying all the revelry that goes with such a flight.
Thank you, and good afternoon.
- [Controller] 78, 79, the threshold.
Wind is three two zero degrees, one zero knots.
That's runway at 834 left clear to land.
(wind rumbling)
(engine whirring)
- [Controller] (muffled speaking) 879,
congratulations on their flight.
- What a great arrival into Sydney.
This is such a history making flight.
In fact, I think this research flight
will shape up the future of aviation.
I'm extremely privileged to be on this flight,
and I'm actually feeling great
even flying after 19 hours.
With the arrival, that's not the end yet.
This is just the start, a beginning of
Qantas centenary celebration.
Stay tuned for more.
(uplifting music)
- We're waiting for you.
Have you got some tissues?
- [Sam] Oh, this is very emotional.
Like this is amazing.
Thank you. - Fantastic, isn't it?
- Thank you, Adrienne, thank you.
- [Woman] Woo!
- Well, I've been flying 19 hours
inside this great Qantas centenary aeroplane.
What a great livery.
I just got out of the aeroplane and realised
what a great livery this aeroplane has.
(uplifting music)
(group cheering)
Cheers to Qantas 100, yay!
(crowd cheering)
(uplifting music)