A China Airlines flight attendant from Taiwan hosts a “fly to nowhere” event for children.
Taoyuan, Taiwan:
Faced with the collapse of the coronavirus among travelers, Taiwanese airlines have started offering “sightseeing flights to nowhere” on their passenger jets – including flight attendant courses for children.
At Taiwan’s China Airlines headquarters in Taoyuan on Saturday, 50 children attended a morning class on how to serve passengers in a simulated cabin.
Cheng Yu-wei, who works in the fashion clothing industry and enjoys traveling abroad, came with his wife and six-year-old daughter to “rekindle that old feeling of traveling.”
“Maybe it’s because we’ve been bored for too long,” Cheng told AFP.
Later that day, the exciting troop of kids took to the skies in their new uniforms for a two-hour flight over the island and the mountain range that runs down its spine.
The flights are part of an innovative attempt by airlines to make extra cash at a time when their operations have all but dried up.
Like most airlines around the world, China Airlines and its main competitor Eva Air have had to shut down a huge chunk of their fleet as international travel evaporates during the pandemic.
Both also have limited domestic activity to fall back on.
On Saturday, an Eva A330 from Taoyuan International Airport flew over the northeastern Cape of Taiwan, circled the Ryukyu Islands in Japan before returning home via the picturesque and rural southeast coast. The total flight time was two hours and 45 minutes.
An economy seat sells for around NT $ 5,288 (US $ 180) while the business class costs NT $ 6,288.
The China Airlines flight takes about two hours and will also fly into Japanese airspace before turning back to the east coast of Taiwan.
Other flights are planned in the coming weeks and Eva and China Airlines say they are quickly exhausted.
Local enthusiasm for travel has been helped by the knowledge that there is currently little chance of catching the coronavirus on a Taiwanese flight.
The island has been touted as a poster on how to beat the virus with fewer than 500 infections and just seven deaths despite its proximity and economic ties to China.
Taiwan, which is blocked from joining the World Health Organization by China, learned from the 2003 SARS epidemic to set up a sophisticated tracking and tracing program that went into action as soon as the outbreak of virus.
It has also virtually sealed its borders, which an island is in a much better position to do.
With large-scale international travel unlikely for the foreseeable future, authorities have encouraged Taiwanese to take domestic vacations instead.
Cruise lines have started offering domestic trips around the island.
In recent weeks, Songshan and Taoyuan Airports have even started offering “flights to nowhere” where people go through the process of checking in and boarding a flight that never takes off.
(This story was not edited by GalacticGaming staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
