Credit: Taipei Songshan Airport
It’s a first-class flight to literally nowhere.
For people who genuinely enjoy traveling by plane, the whole pandemic thing has understandably put a damper on a favored pastime, to say the absolute least. While airports are gradually reopening, accompanied by much more strict safety and cleaning regulations, it’s mostly just short domestic flights. Traveling abroad is a very tricky subject right now, with the option only available in certain countries and to certain other countries. Taiwan in particular is keeping its flights firmly grounded to keep its populace safe from COVID-19, but they also get how much some folks miss flying. While they can’t send them anywhere, they can at least give them a taste of what they’re missing.
Taipei Songshan Airport has been running detailed tours of the terminal and planes in a cute little program titled “pretend to go abroad.” The airport’s social media team held a raffle for 180 people to experience the pretend flight which garnered some 7,000 entries. The 180 winners were divided into three half-day tour groups, with the first two tours running on July 2 and July 4, and the third running tomorrow, July 7.
“In addition to letting the participants go through security screening, identification inspection and other immigration clearance procedures, they actually boarded the plane to experience the fun of boarding,” Ting Hsu, who works in Songshan Airport’s planning department, told CNN Travel.
Credit: Taipei Songshan Airport
In addition to letting tour groups go through the simulated boarding and check-in process, airport employees were nearby to inform them of their updated pandemic policies so they can know what to expect when flights get off the ground again.
“China Airlines has arranged personnel for airplane cleaning and disinfection to give instructions on pandemic prevention, so that the public can understand our aviation industry’s efforts in pandemic prevention,” said Hsu.
Taiwan still hasn’t announced when they’ll be opening their borders back up, but they did say at the end of June that they were drafting up plans for a very gradual reopening process.
