Two sunrises, 10,000 miles ... my feet didn’t touch the ground
At 4am, Heathrow was eerily empty, but the excitement was palpable. I was one of 52 passengers – journalists, scientists, Qantas staff and medical test subjects – about to embark on a recordbreaking research voyage that would bring us a step closer to the “final frontier in aviation”, regular non-stop flights from London to Sydney.
The aim of the flight, operated by Qantas, was to research the effects on crew and passengers of ultralong-haul services, and convince safety regulators that such an arduous commercial flight is viable.
According to Alan Joyce, the Qantas chief executive, it is not just the “final frontier in aviation”, but an end to the “tyranny of distance, and the challenges of Australia’s geographical isolation”. Climate change activists say it is a nightmare. To me, with half of my family in Australia, it could be a game-changer.
This is only the second time a passenger plane has made this leap; the first was in 1989, using an adapted 747 carrying 16 passengers and 183.5 tons of fuel. We took off with nearly half the fuel and twice the people, aiming to beat its 20hr 9min flight time.
Lift-off was just after 6am, aboard a new Boeing 787 Dreamliner named
Longreach, with 100 tons of fuel to cover more than 10,000 miles non-stop in 19 hours and 17 minutes.
One of the scientific aims was to see if anything could be done to trick our bodies into a lesser state of jet lag.
Capt Helen Trennery, a Qantas pilot with 30 years of experience, four other pilots and six flight attendants operated in two rotating teams, with the pilots getting eight hours of rest between shifts and the crew getting five and a half.
University of Sydney scientists monitored six guinea-pig passengers and all of the crew using wearable devices. Multiple Gopros were fitted in the cockpit to analyse the pilots’ alertness, in addition to the EEG headsets worn to assess their brain waves. Staff gave urine samples to measure levels of melatonin– the hormone our bodies produce to promote sleep.
We would all witness two sunrises, the first emerging 40 minutes after take-off. Usually, breakfast would be served around this time, but this was not a usual flight.
To force our body clocks to Sydney time, the first
“dark phase” segment of the voyage was dedicated to lulling us into sleep, with exercise, a heavy dinner (and wine, for me at least) and darkened cabin, and the final section into waking us up in time for landing, with brighter lights and energising food.
I fell asleep fine, but awoke five hours later, ravenous, the first classic sign that the body clock is flummoxed. In the dark, I crept to the galley and foraged for sustenance in the hope it would help me nod off again, to no avail.
With five hours to go, somewhere over Indonesia, our second sunrise was on the horizon. Capt Trennery announced: “Congratulations, you are all now members of the Rare and Secret Order of the Double Sunrise.”
This wasn’t a spontaneous turn of phrase. It was the honour given to hundreds who saw the phenomenon from 1943-45. During the Second World War, Qantas operated secretive 30-hour flights between Perth and what is now Sri Lanka to re-establish the Australia-britain air link after the fall of Singapore. Always under threat from the Japanese, pilots had to fly in total radio silence using only the stars to navigate; all landed safely.
So, as it transpired, did we, after a final meal service (with coconut water to rehydrate us; spicy dishes and caffeine to get us through the last stretch), each clutching a certificate of membership to the Rare and Secret Order of the Double Sunrise, and grinning through our tiredness.