A radio message received from the Antarctic just before New Year confirmed that three Australians had succeeded in walking to the South Pole - a remarkable achievement. But there's an easier way of getting there. In the past four years, nearly 10,000 Australians have been to Antarctica and back in a single day, travelling in jumbo jets in a unique series of sightseeing flights. Recently Red Harrison joined a group flying to the South Pole for lunch.

The flight began rather badly, I thought at first, because it was due to leave Sydney at 8am but didn't get off the ground until 11.

This delay, we were told, was caused by a minor mechanical fault which had to be corrected. Normally, a big Boeing can fly safely even with this kind of problem, but on flights to the Antarctic, the rules are different - every aircraft going down there has to be checked and rechecked until absolutely everything is working properly. Which is very reassuring, but one elderly lady worried that being three hours late meant we would arrive in darkness and miss the spectacular sights.

Madam, she was assured, it doesn't get dark in Antarctica until the beginning of April. In fact, the southern Summer offers the only time people can fly there and expect to see much because the rest of the year is cloudy and dark. And very cold.

A reading of almost minus 90 degrees celsius was recorded a few years ago, marking it as the coldest place on earth. Superlatives come easily in Antarctica and the very idea of flying there and back in a single day - going to the South Pole for lunch - well, not much can equal that.

The whole journey takes about twelve-and-a-half hours. After the aircraft leaves Sydney it doesn't land until it gets back to Sydney, so the flight is classified as internal or domestic - which means no passport is required - and there's no duty-free.

It takes about four hours to reach the first of hundreds of vast floating icebergs melting in the Southern Ocean and then even though we're still very high, all 350 passengers go ever-so-slightly mad.

By the time we reach the towering cliffs of ice of the Antarctic mainland, the jumbo has slowed down to about half speed, descended to a mere 600 metres and the atmosphere in the cabin has all the noisy indiscipline of a school bus ride. This is nothing like any flight I've ever made. Every passenger is standing in the aisle, or crouching at a window, shouting with excitement, swapping seats, or dashing about to the other side of the aircraft to catch yet another outstanding view. And, of course, everyone is frantically busy with cameras and videos.

There's a video camera in the cockpit too, and - as we fly over the magnetic South Pole - it beams pictures into the cabin of the aircraft's magnetic compass, hopelessly confused, spinning in all directions at once. Happily, the real work of navigating this flight is done by sophisticated electronics and satellites.

A voice from the cockpit advises everyone to keep their sunglasses on, because the ground below is whiter than white, cleaner than anyone could possibly imagine. You can catch snow blindness or a nasty headache, even up here. And because the air is so dry and totally free of pollution, every view is breathtakingly, crystal clear.

We spend four hours flying over the frozen sea along the cliffs and up over the awesome vistas of the Transantarctic Mountains, where the pilot - there are four on board - flies figure-of-eight turns over astonishing peaks and sculptured battlements and long winding valleys of glaciers.

Yet we are actually seeing very little of Antarctica - because the continent is twice as big as Australia, nearly one-and-a-half times the size of the United States. This we learn from veterans of Antarctic expeditions who deliver commentaries during the flight, telling us, for example, how the ice has been measured at nearly 5,000 metres thick - or about three miles.

Other former expeditioners walk through the aircraft dressed in Antarctic clothing and invite passengers to try it on for themselves. Many do. Many more take flashlight photographs. This aeroplane carries a set of polar clothing for everyone on board and it has emergency tents able to withstand Antarctic winds which blow with the force of a hurricane for days at a time.

We hear from veterans down on the ground, too, at Commonwealth Bay where they are rebuilding huts that the Australian explorer Doulgas Mawson put up in the year 1911. By radio, amplified so every passenger can hear, they tell us that inside one hut, under years of ice that is startlingly clear, they can see knives and forks and cups frozen in time on a table.

All too quickly, it is time for us to head back to Australia and the cabin crew issues new boarding passes marked Antarctica to Sydney. A nice souvenir. Nonetheless, I discover then that, for all the precautions, this aircraft does have a maintenance problem. Turning for home was time for a drink, so I walked to the bar. Whisky and soda, please. Sorry, said the steward. We've run out of ice.
 

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