Travelers Suffering From Wanderlust Are Sitting On Hours-Long Flights Only To Land Where They Started

We understand the idea of missing traveling, for certain. Everybody in the world misses going on vacations and landing in exotic destinations right now. But the idea of missing the actual flight itself is something that’s a little tougher to wrap our heads around.

Regardless, people are apparently missing flying the friendly skies so much that they are getting up into airplanes, circling around and landing exactly where they began.

People are literally spending a couple hours in a plane “taking flights to nowhere”, according to the WSJ. 

Airlines like Japan’s All Nippon Airways and Qantas Airlines are putting together packages that fly specifically through scenery and then land right back where they started.

All Nippon offered 330 tickets for a 90 minute Hawaii themed flight and more than 50,000 people applied. Qantas put together a 7 hour flight that passes the Great Barrier Reef at low altitudes and sold out of all 134 tickets, including some in business class that cost $2,700, within 10 minutes. 

The flights are a loophole through Covid restrictions that now require multiweek quarantines after flights. 

Taiwan has put together flights that go along the country’s eastern coastline and that allow kids to dress up in cabin crew uniforms. 

25 year old Sarah Lin recently took a four hour flight to South Korea’s Jeju Island, even though the plane never landed. The flight booked its 112 seats in four minutes. It was tough to get a view of the islands from her seat and the weather was overcast. But Lin enjoyed the experience, nonetheless. 

Lin said: “It felt like I was traveling abroad for the first time in my life. Everything was so unfamiliar. I can’t go abroad anyway. I wanted to culturally experience Korea.”

The package includes a voucher for a second flight to Jeju Island once restrictions are lifted. 

26-year-old travel blogger Angel Ko had her social media followers in a frenzy after she posted a photo of her in an airplane. “Since nobody can actually travel right now, this kind of post is quite catching,” she told the WSJ. 

But not everybody is as excited about flights to nowhere, however. Passengers still have to wear masks and have their temperatures taken on each flight. Brian Huang, who runs a travel-tips website in Taipei, said: “The actual flying is what I want to re-experience the least.”

Marcus Yong, a marketing vice president at Klook, a Hong Kong-based travel company concluded: “People are missing the most simple travel moments.”