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

It's Wednesday the 25th of September, three months to Christmas Day.

But that's not important right now. Or is it?

Well, my guest today is Natalie Wilson, travel writer for the Independent.

And I'm talking to her about low-cost, no frills.

There's been lots of chat about that,

and indeed under a social media poll

which showed that two-thirds of travellers

wouldn't even think of countenancing a trip

more than four hours long. But I quoted Natalie in that article because Natalie,

you were going against the grain. I was. I would be very willing to fly as far as I could for

as cheap as I could if it was an option. When we were talking earlier, you actually mentioned Australia on a low-cost flight,

but that would just be incredible uncomfortable.

I was hearing yesterday from Rob Burgess, the frequent flyer man, who said, yeah, business class

in Europe, isn't that great?

And, of course, who wants to be stuck down the back in a

middle seat for four hours you're talking about potentially 24 hours to australia possibly could be an

age thing a height thing i don't need extra leg room i could fly ryanette to australia if i had enough

cheese and ham toasties to keep me going. I wouldn't need a screen.

I'll go retro. I'll bring some books. I think if it was cheap enough, it's well worth it to get to

the other side of the world in an economy seat. Well, I will share that with Ryanair. I'm sure

they'll be delighted. Of course, there is the small problem of aircraft not being able to get all the way to Australia yet. But you can, for example, and this is what triggered the story from next April, you'll be able to go all the way seven hours to Jeddah in Saudi Arabia. You could find further budget airline flights which you could

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