Taiwan’s Ministry of Transportation and Communications announced today that it will launch “flight to nowhere” version 2.0, allowing those flights to take off and land at different airports on the island.
The second version of the “flights-to-nowhere” is very similar to the domestic flights that fly different destinations. As China Airlines and Eve Air have domestic flights operated by the subsidiaries, Mandarin Airlines and Uni Air, the proposal has been considered to favor StarLux Airlines, which does not have domestic routes. In response to the public’s questions, officials from the Ministry of Transport stressed that the case was discussed with various airlines, with the aim to open up new business opportunities for aviation-related businesses with no preference.
The Ministry of Transportation and Communications said that the proposal 2.0 allows flights to take off and land at different airports, including Taoyuan Airport at one end, and the other end at the airports that accept international charter or flights, including Songshan, Taichung, Tainan, Kaohsiung, Hualien and Taitung airports. The flight should also be more than three hours in one way, with the ticket price no less than NTD 5500 (USD 192).
The previous version of flights-to-nowhere was designed to attract travelers by offering unique itineraries, special meals, and discounted duty-free products under the same airport take-off and landing principle. Since its launch in August this year, airlines have had 27 flights flying a total of 5,138 passengers.
The flight-to-nowhere V2.0 is also expected to combine local tourism diversity with flight experiences and local tours, and hopefully to help boost the local tourism, airline, and airport duty-free shops industries to tide over the epidemic.