To keep pilots busy and generate income, some airlines in Asia, for example in Japan and Singapore, invented flights-to-nowhere: a one or two-hour flight to return to the same place. It might sound ludicrous, but it certainly has its customer base. Now, there are sightseeing flights over the Chernobyl power plant.
In Ukraine, the national airline, Ukraine International, is to launch flights-to-nowhere as well, but to sightsee Chernobyl.
In a statement, the airline explains that “faced with numerous requests from their beloved passengers” it will offer a flight-to-nowhere at low altitude over Kyiv and to the Chernobyl disaster zone.
The first flight will take place on March 7 and all seats are sold out already. On the 13th another flight is planned.
The trips will be made on an Embraer 195 aircraft. The plane will fly at an altitude of 900 meters (cruising altitude of an aircraft is about 10,000 meters), and the aircraft will go along the Dnieper River, towards Chernobyl.
The Chernobyl zone still has a significant amount of radiation, but nobody seems to care about safety precautions. Currently, what this could mean for passengers of an airplane is not known. Chernobyl is about 100 kilometers north of Kyiv, from where the flight departs.
For aviation enthusiasts, the aircraft will also fly over the Antonov State Enterprise located nearby Kyiv, home of the An-225 Mriya, the world’s largest cargo-only aircraft.
The trip will last about one hour and ten minutes, according to forecasts. The price is about 85 euros.