Tested by the coronavirus pandemic, airlines are full of imagination to get their planes back off the ground. Certainly influenced by the success of “flights to nowhere”, departing and arriving from the same airport, Thai Airways now offers a pilgrimage in the sky. As the British daily relates Guardian, this special flight flies over 99 sacred Buddhist sites in 31 provinces of Thailand. Enough to allow the faithful on board to pray and chant mantras in the four corners of the kingdom in the space of a few hours.
This unique flight, which departs from Bangkok and returns there without stopping, is accessible from 5,999 baht (approximately 165 euros). Passengers are entitled to a prayer book and a full meal. This offer obviously recalls the multiple “flights to nowhere” offered by many airlines around the world, while the sector is going through an unprecedented crisis caused by the coronavirus. Last September, the Australian company Qantas had sold, in the space of ten minutes, 130 plane tickets for a seven-hour flight without stopping, in order to visit, through the aircraft’s windows, the emblematic places of the land of kangaroos. The Japanese company All Nippon Airways has offered flights to nowhere with a Hawaiian atmosphere, to satisfy nostalgic globetrotters.
A survival operation for Thai Airways
Thai Airways relies heavily on its aerial pilgrimage. As reported in particular by Agence France-Presse last September, the company suffered more than 750 million euros in losses in the first half. And its debt reached 9 billion euros this summer. The firm was already in very bad shape before the health crisis, because of poor management and aging devices, greedy in kerosene. Since the beginning of October, Thailand, relatively spared by the Covid-19 epidemic, has gradually reopened its borders to foreign tourists, to revive tourism. But the restrictions remain very extensive and most of the aircraft of Thai Airways, which operates mainly on international routes, remain grounded.
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