Board the Airbus 300—to Nowhere
Travel Blog • Michael Yessis • 10.02.07 | 8:01 AM ET
The plane never leaves the ground, and might only spin in circles if it tried—it only has one wing and a hint of a tail. Yet the $4 tickets are going fast. According to the Times of London, 99 percent of India’s population has never traveled on a plane, so retired Indian Airlines engineer Bahadur Chand Gupta has set up “virtual journeys” on an old Airbus 300 in Delhi.
Matthew Campbell writes:
All they want is the chance to know what it is like to sit on a plane, listen to announcements and be waited on by stewardesses bustling up and down the aisle.
He continues:
The plane has no lighting and the lavatories are out of order. The air-conditioning is powered by a generator. Even so, about 40 passengers turn up each Saturday to queue for boarding cards.
Captain Gupta’s wife and a crew of five walk the aisles, serving drinks and meals. Amazing. Travelers on most real flights these days don’t get that kind of service.
Related on World Hum:
* Lonely Planet’s ‘Tales from Nowhere’
* Indians: Would Somebody Please Move the Boeing 737 in the Street?
* ‘Terminal Men’ Spend Almost Seven Weeks Living in Delhi Airport
Photo by Nic Name, via Flickr (Creative Commons).