Imagine getting on a plane, finding your seat, and stowing your bag in the overhead bin. You sit down, settle into the chair, buckle your belt, only to have to get up to let someone through. They even took the window seat. The engine’s roar fires up as the flight attendant gives the safety brief. Finally, you are in the air. The next thing you know, you feel the jolt of the landing gear hitting the runway. The plane taxies to the terminal, and the seatbelt light goes off. You empty from the plane only to find yourself exactly where you just left. Before the pandemic, this would have seemed like an absurd waste of time. However, when the world stood still, flights to nowhere were born.
Scenic Flights to Nowhere
Qantas and Taiwan lead the way as places embracing a phenomenon. Flights taking passengers in the sky and around picturesque locations allowed them to take in the beauty before returning them to the point of origin. Passengers ate it up.
The seven-hour Qantas flight sold out in ten minutes. One viewing of the supermoon sold out in less than three. Taiwan went so far as to offer speed dating on their flight. People flocked to any opportunity to escape the realities of the ground, only to find majesty in the sky.
“These flights offered unique opportunities to our customers who missed the experience of flying and excitement of travel, as well as creating more work for our people, keeping our aircraft active and promoting Australian tourism,” said a spokesperson for Qantas.
Future of Flights to Nowhere
When airlines first started selling tickets for flights to nowhere, critics immediately raised questions about sustainability.
“This flight may go nowhere, but planet-wrecking emissions have to go somewhere. That somewhere is straight into the atmosphere where they contribute to climate breakdown,” a spokesperson for Friends of the Earth told CNN Travel, following Qantas’ first sightseeing trip.
Tourism expert Dr. Tony Johnston suggested that continuing sightseeing flights once more regular flight schedules have been reinstated would be difficult for airlines to justify. “While the airline sector does not have the best record on carbon emissions, even the most hedonistic airline would find this a challenging product to justify and an easy target for regulators.”
While some flights to nowhere are still currently scheduled for 2022, Johnston suggested they’re unlikely to remain.
“My expectation is that we will look back on the ‘flight to nowhere’ as a really unusual quirk of the pandemic,” he said.
