- 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)
