Hello and welcome to today's independent travel podcast with me, Simon Calder.

It's Tuesday, the 25th of March, nine months till Christmas.

I'm in Toulouse in southwest France, where I've had the great pleasure of talking to Vanessa Hudson.

She is the chief executive of Qantas.

Yes, that Australian airline. And I was particularly interested in hearing from

her about Project Sunrise. The Qantas scheme to get non-stop planes, in fact an Airbus A350,

specially kitted out flying over 10,000 miles from London to Sydney and under 10,000 miles from Sydney to New York.

She told me how it's going.

The first aircraft is entering the production cycle in September this year.

So the parts are going to start to come together.

So it is on track to be delivered at the end of next this year. So the parts are going to start to come together. So it is on track to be

delivered at the end of next calendar year. And as you know, that Project Sunrise is a four-cabbon

aircraft, so it's first-class, business class, premium economy and economy. And this gives us the

ability to redefine the next cabin experience that we've got for all of those.

But most importantly, we are also working really hard to make sure that given the flight is so long that we study,

and we've got Charles Perkins University working with us looking at how to manage jet lag,

how to eat, when to sleep, when to move,

and we're going to be building that into an integral part of the in-flight experience.

As you might have ascertained, this isn't going to be the cheapest way of flying from London to Sydney,

and Vanessa Hudson says that people are prepared to pay a price premium of 20%,

which in economy class could mean over £300.

Yeah, there is a price premium and I think that the confidence that we have is one, the feedback that we are getting today on our Perth London service.

...