With Qantas' Boeing 787 now flying on international routes – first to Los Angeles, and then from March 2018 to London – there'll be plenty of business travellers snoozing away in their lie-flat beds.

Little known to them, directly overhead there's another set of beds – inside a hidden upstairs compartment – with arguably the best beds on the plane, and this is where the pilots will be napping between shifts.

Welcome to the Boeing 787's secret bedrooms.

There are two crew rest areas on the Dreamliner: one at the front of the plane, directly above the first three rows of business class; and a second larger space for the flight attendants, located at the rear of the plane above the last rows of economy.

You can spot their exact location because the central overhead luggage bins are missing from those parts of each cabin – they've been replaced by flat panels without a latch to open and close the bin.

The pilots grab their shut-eye above rows 2 and 3...

... with the flight attendants snoozing upstairs of economy rows 57 through 59.

The door to each crew rest area is protected by a combination lock set into an innocuous-looking galley panel, which swings open to reveal a steep winding staircase leading upstairs.

This is the pilot's rest area, which has a well-padded seat tucked away next to the stairwell...

... and two wide flat beds.

There's a bolster and curtain between them, to provide a little privacy and a sense of your own space.

Next to each bed are recesses for water bottles and oddments such as an amenity kit, reading glasses, a phone and other bits of personal kit...

... a wide rack for books, magazines, tablets and what-not...

... an AC socket to recharge that smatphone or tablet...

... and an intercom handset for communicating with other areas of the aircraft, such as the crew stations and the flight deck.

The flight attendant rest area at the rear of the Boeing 787 is pretty much the same, only larger – it has beds for six cabin crew, and you can bet they'll all be used during that 17+ hour non-stop trek between Perth and London.