Hello and welcome to today's independent travel podcast Tuesday the 17th of September.

One of the most interesting developments so far this month in terms of aviation has been the announcement by WIS Air,

yes, the well-known third biggest European low-cost airline that they will soon be flying from

London Gatwick to Jeddah. What's interesting about that, of course, is that this is a budget airline.

They'll be using a snazzy new Airbus A321XLR aircraft, but it does signify, I think, the longest that we

have seen so far of narrow-bodied low-cost flights from the UK. Let's check whether

I will not unwrite about that, with Reese Jones, a writer for Head for Points,

the leading frequent flyer website and newsletter. So, Reese, am I right?

Yes, I believe so. It's the first time I think we're seeing a low-cost or ultra-low-cost airline,

as some people might describe whizair, flying such a long distance and it's all

enabled by this brand new aircraft the Airbus A321 XLR and the XLR stands for extra long range.

So you'd normally see the A321 or the A321 on your usual European short haul routes.

An Airbus has actually done something really clever.

They've put an extra fuel tank in the belly of the plane.

And that enables it to travel up to 4,000 nautical miles.

So much, much further than you used to see.

And that's enabling all sorts of new routes to open up. And we've

seen the aircraft launching the end of this year with Iberian Aer Lingus. We've seen the long-range

version, so not the XLR, just the LR, used by JetBlue, TAP, and a few other airlines across

the transatlantic market. So it's a really versatile

new aircraft. It lets you open really long, thin, so smaller passenger count routes for the first

time. So it's very exciting for these airlines. How exciting is it going to be for the passenger,

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