The Australian airline Qantas offers a seven-hour scenic flight over Australia. ‘The flight to nowhere’ was sold out in no time.
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Remarkable initiative by Qantas to win back customers in these turbulent times of corona. A Boeing 787-9 Dreamliner from the airline takes off from Sydney on October 10, will fly at relatively low altitudes above the country’s best-known landmarks, landing in Sydney seven hours later without a stopover.
The Great Barrier Reef, Uluru, Byron Bay and Sydney Harbor are visited. The Dreamliner’s windows are very large, so that passengers can at least once again marvel at the tourist gems of the country from the air, according to Qantas, emphasizing that there are no border restrictions in the air. Due to the corona pandemic, the borders Down Under have been closed to foreign visitors for months. Travel between Australian states is also largely prohibited.
“Many of our frequent fliers are used to getting on a plane every week, and miss that experience of flying as much as the destinations themselves,” said CEO Alan Joyce of the remarkable initiative. According to Qantas, the flight was sold out in less than ten minutes, even though a seat cost at least 787 Australian dollars, or 487 euros.
Qantas isn’t the only airline offering ‘flights to nowhere,’ flights departing and arriving at the same airport. Singapore Airlines is also planning something similar, while the Japanese ANA and two Taiwanese airlines have already offered such flights, with the focus mainly on the experience on board. The campaign slogan? “Pretend you’re going abroad.”
And long before the corona pandemic, ‘scenic flights’ were already offered, such as flying over Antarctica. That sometimes went wrong in 1979, when an Air New Zealand plane crashed on Mount Erebus, and none of the 257 occupants survived the accident.
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