Tyler Cowen points us to the market in fake plane trips for people who want to get a taste of the real thing, but can't afford an actual flight:
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.In a country where 99% of the population have never experienced air travel, the “virtual journeys” of Bahadur Chand Gupta, a retired Indian Airlines engineer, have proved a roaring success.
As on an ordinary aircraft, customers buckle themselves in and watch a safety demonstration. But when they look out of the windows, the landscape never changes. Even if “Captain” Gupta wanted to get off the ground, the plane would not go far: it only has one wing and a large part of the tail is missing.
But at least part of the journey is realistic:
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.
The Atlantic needs to start paying Tyler Cowen.
Yeah, Megan, you've linked to Tyler a lot lately. People are going to start talking.
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.
If they get more than a bag of pretzels and a plastic cup of soda, it truly is a fake plane trip.
Reminds me of a favorite Art Buchwald shtick.
Also I wonder if they hand out cell phones (fake or not) and ring them at random times, maybe plant a few people at random to "talk" on them too, before "takeoff" and after "landing". A crying baby or two shouldn't be hard to scare up. And what air journey experience isn't complete without the random "lost luggage" event. Or the ritual open-the-overstuffed-overhead-bin/catch-the-falling-briefcase maneuver.
And charge them $5 to watch a bad Drew Barrymore movie.
Yes, but I bet they are on schedule almost 100% of the time.
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