A 10-hour flight with two boarding passes for one person and a destination about 40 kilometres above the plane. Is this the strangest travel experience?
We’d been in the air about 2½ hours when the pilot came over the intercom to report the first hints of a glow, dead ahead to the south.
It took a little longer before anything other than a starry night sky and a deep black Southern Ocean was visible to the passengers, even through the relatively large cabin windows of the Qantas 787-9 Dreamliner chartered for this journey in search of the world’s biggest light show, the Aurora Australis.
Andrew BurkeAFR Weekend editorAndrew Burke is the editor of AFR Weekend, based in the Sydney newsroom. He has worked at the Financial Times in London, the South China Morning Post in Hong Kong and reported from across Asia and the Middle East. Connect with Andrew on Twitter. Email Andrew at aburke@afr.com
