Passenger jet that travels at 3,800mph

The A2 jet will fly at 3,400mph - five times the speed of sound

Engineers have come up with what they are calling a hypersonic plane that will link Europe and Australia in less than five hours.

The A2 won't have any windows because they would melt at speeds of Mach 5.

That is around 3,800 mph, more than twice the speed Concorde travelled at.

The main problem is that it will be 25 years before you will be able to use it.

The jet would fly at the height of the ozone layer, around 19 miles above earth.

Using current technology

The A2 has been designed by Reaction Engines in Oxfordshire and would carry 300 passengers.

It would be twice the size of the biggest jumbo jets at 143m long and would be environmentally-friendly, only producing water vapour and nitrous oxide as exhaust.

It runs on a liquid hydrogen Scimitar engine.

It is being developed by the company using existing technology.

The A2 jet will be nearly twice as long as an Airbus A380

Alan Bond, managing director of Reaction Engines, said: "The A2 is designed to leave Brussels international airport, fly quietly and subsonically out into the north Atlantic at mach 0.9 before reaching mach five across the North Pole and heading over the Pacific to Australia.

"The flight time from Brussels to Australia, allowing for air traffic control, would be four hours 40 minutes.

"It sounds incredible by today's standards but I don't see why future generations can't make day trips to Australasia.

A2's vital statistics Top speed: 3,800mph Total passengers: 300 Cruising altitude: 19 miles Length: 143m Width: 45m Maximum distance: 12,500 miles

"Our work shows that it is possible technically; now it's up to the world to decide if it wants it," he told the Guardian newspaper.

The jet is being designed using funding from the European Space Agency.

It is part of a project encouraging companies to push the boundaries of commercial air travel using space technology.