Chimu Adventures' scenic flight to the South Pole on Qantas Points

Most flights take you somewhere. This one takes you nowhere, and that is precisely the point. Chimu Adventures charters a Qantas Boeing 787-9 Dreamliner for a scenic flight that departs Melbourne, spends the better part of a day over the frozen continent, and lands back in Melbourne roughly sixteen hours later. Nobody disembarks in Antarctica. Nobody needs a coat. And for those who have been accumulating Qantas Points without an obvious use for them, it is one of the more unusual redemptions available from Australia.

We flew on the first of these South Pole scenic flights, in an Economy No Wing seat booked with Qantas Points rather than cash. What follows is an account of what the day is actually like, and what to consider before you commit a large slice of your points balance to it.

The shape of the day

A 6am departure means a 4am check-in, which for anyone living any distance from Melbourne Airport means an uncomfortably early alarm. Staying at an airport hotel the night before is a sensible precaution.

The departures board is the first oddity. The service appears as a Qantas flight number with "South Pole" attached to it, and the destination beside it is Melbourne. The boarding pass is stranger still: it records the destination as a mystery flight. At the gate there is a desk handing out identification lanyards alongside boarding passes, and the queue has the atmosphere of a group tour rather than a commercial departure. The demographic spread is wide, roughly from mid-twenties upward, mixing curious travellers with working scientists.

The aircraft is configured in the usual 787-9 layout, nine across in a 3-3-3 arrangement in Economy. On this charter the middle seat of each row is deliberately left empty, which takes a good deal of the sting out of a long sector down the back.

Musical chairs in the sky

Because this is a scenic flight, window seats are the entire commodity being sold. Chimu manages this by issuing most passengers two boarding passes with two different seat numbers: one for the outbound leg, one for the return. Halfway through the day you swap. The arrangement shares the windows around so that as many people as possible get an unobstructed look at the continent.

The exception is the Limited View ticket, the cheaper option, which comes with no window allocation at all. In practice this matters less than it sounds. Once the ice appears, people stand in the aisles, swap seats informally and offer up their window for a few minutes at a time. There are also windows near the galley areas.

Our reporter spent part of the return leg in Premium Economy and found it the better seat and the worse experience. The energy of the day lives in Economy. If you want the camaraderie, book down the back and accept that you will be standing up a lot — which, on a sixteen-hour sector, is no bad thing for the legs.

Getting there

The first five hours or so are an ordinary long-haul flight. Meals come out, the inflight entertainment gets a workout, and nothing about the cabin suggests where it is headed.

Cloud cover is the real variable on this trip. On our flight it persisted almost to the Antarctic coast before thinning at the last moment, and it returned more than once during the day. The saving grace is that there is essentially no other traffic over Antarctica, which gives the flight crew unusual freedom to alter course and thread around weather rather than fly through it.

Over the ice

Once the coast appears, the crew bring the aircraft down from a normal cruising altitude of about 12,000 metres to around 7,000 metres so that the detail below is legible. The change is obvious and it transforms the view.

The route is not arbitrary. It traces the paths taken by Roald Amundsen and Robert Falcon Scott in their race to the South Pole in the early 1900s, and the onboard material explains the overlay as you go. Roughly six hours are spent over the continent.

The set pieces, in the order they tend to arrive:

• The Ross Ice Shelf. The largest floating ice shelf in the world, and about the size of France. It appears alongside snow-covered mountains as the coast comes up.
• Mount Erebus. Antarctica's most active volcano, rising out of a flat interior in the manner of Mount Fuji or Kilimanjaro. The aircraft circles it several times so that both sides of the cabin get a look.
• The south magnetic pole. Passengers who have brought a compass get to watch it behave oddly. This is the point at which the magnetic field runs vertically.
• The geographic South Pole. The aircraft circles, and if the cloud cooperates, the American Amundsen-Scott research station comes into view below.
• The McMurdo Dry Valleys. Seen on the way home, and arguably the highlight. These are large snow-free valleys that have not seen rain for close to two million years — one of the most extreme deserts on the planet, and a genuine surprise after hours of unbroken white.

Entertainment onboard is not the seatback screen. Guest speakers narrate what is passing below and tell their own Antarctic stories. On our flight the pilot connected by satellite phone to two expeditioners crossing the ice beneath us, who described eating around 8,500 calories a day to sustain the trek. A scientist at the Amundsen-Scott station also came on the aircraft's audio system to talk about life there.

Booking it

Chimu Adventures charters the aircraft and sells the seats, and booking is done by telephone rather than online. The operator also runs Antarctic scenic flights from other Australian cities, but the full South Pole routing departs from Melbourne only. Upcoming dates are published on the Chimu Adventures website.

Our Economy No Wing seat was booked for 170,000 Qantas Points with no fees or taxes payable, against a cash price of $3,920 for the same seat on that flight. That works out at a little over two and a half cents of value per point, which is a strong result for an Economy seat and well above Point Hacks' standing valuation of a Qantas Point. Other seats on the aircraft were priced above $10,000 in cash. Points availability on these charters is offered periodically rather than continuously, and pricing is set by the operator, so treat those figures as a record of one flight rather than a standing rate.

The season is short. The flights run only from around late November to early December, timed to the most favourable weather, so booking early is the safer approach.

Practical notes

• Bring a power bank. Photographs and video will flatten a phone battery well before the day is over.
• Accept that cloud is part of the deal. The crew will work around it where they can, but no operator can promise clear skies over Antarctica.
• There is no jet lag, no checked baggage and no cold-weather clothing to pack. You are home the same night.

Frequently asked questions

Does the flight land in Antarctica? No. It is a scenic flight that departs and returns to the same airport, in this case Melbourne. Nobody sets foot on the continent.

How long is the flight? Around sixteen hours in total, with roughly six of those spent over Antarctica itself.

Can I choose my seat? Not on an Economy No Wing fare. Seats are allocated, and most passengers receive two boarding passes with different seat numbers so that window seats are shared between the outbound and return legs.

What happens if it is cloudy? Cloud is common and can obscure parts of the route. Because there is almost no other air traffic over Antarctica, the crew have latitude to change course and fly around weather, but clear views are not guaranteed.

When do these flights operate? The South Pole flights run in a short window from around late November to early December, chosen for the most favourable weather conditions.

Can I book with Qantas Points? Points redemptions have been offered on these charters, but they are released by the operator rather than bookable through the Qantas website, and availability is periodic. Bookings are made by phone with Chimu Adventures.

This information is general in nature. It does not take your personal circumstances into account.