The cheapest seat is $999, the dearest more than $6000. It's the first time an A380 has done such a trip. The travel company involved has run these Antarctic flights since 1994, until now on Boeing 747s. In a way it's a voyage to nowhere, take-off and landing in the same place. It feels somehow as if it shouldn't be happening. The plane has orange, yellow and purple streamers inside. At midnight we find ourselves with champagne and party whistles. In a plane.
''It's a party flight and also an expedition,'' says the travel company's head, Phil Asker. ''Passengers are welcome to dance to the jazz band if that is what they want.''
One couple gets engaged as the flight rolls on, dipping and leaning for better views, premium windows in high demand. One man has a suspected heart attack but it turns out to be respiratory and he lies hooked to a drip up the front all the way home. There are 18 birthday parties going on. Two 50th wedding anniversaries. And also a 49th, for 70-somethings Alan and Elaine Horsfield of NSW, perpetual travellers who want to see everything in the world.
Next year they'll party again. Mrs Horsfield says she wants to do a flight like this again but go first-class for all the comforts. Her husband, a writer, wants to go one better. He wants to buy a flight into space.
For the complete report: antarctica|new years eve
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