A $1 ‘Flight to Nowhere’ Is Taking Kids on the Trip of a Lifetime

A flight to nowhere on the outskirts of New Delhi is bringing children an experience they might not otherwise have: a chance to feel what it’s like to travel on an airplane.

The experience comes courtesy of 58-year-old Bahadur Chand Gupta, a retired aircraft engineer who in 2003 paid $10,000 for a decommissioned Airbus A300 so he could host simulated flight departures, charging as much as $1 or as little as nothing for the experience. Since then, his flights to nowhere have become popular, especially among groups of schoolchildren.

Gupta grew up in a small village in India and was the first person there to qualify as as an aircraft engineer. When he went to work for India Airlines it was a big deal in his village, and the people there wanted to know more about what he did.

“None of them had ever flown, and many of them used to ask if I could take them inside a plane,” Gupta told The National. “For security reasons that was never possible, but saying no always made me feel very uncomfortable and disappointed. After some time I began to think that I should do something outside of the airport.”

While many people around the world have flown on an airplane, many in villages around India have not and may never have the chance. According to World Bank estimates, nearly 280 million people live below the poverty line in India.

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Passengers get the full in-flight experience, complete with the collection of boarding passes, the standard emergency procedure presentation by the flight attendants (Gupta employs a small staff), a cockpit tour, commentary from the pilot about the flight, and an in-flight lunch. At the end, there’s a simulated crash landing, and passengers exit down an emergency evacuation slide—something many might find frightening, but it’s the part the schoolchildren enjoy most.

“I did some research and found that relative to other places in the world, far more people are injured or killed in emergency situations in India than anywhere else,” says Gupta. “That’s because people are not used to flying and have no idea what to do. I thought if I could teach people that, then it would be very helpful.”

He says his popular attraction hasn’t made him rich, but he does make a profit, as airlines have begun paying him to use the plane for training purposes.

Maybe these simulated flights to nowhere will inspire young people to travel or become engineers themselves.

“I saw so many things inside,” says an excited boy named Jatin in a video from Barcroft TV, sitting in an airplane for the first time. “In case the plane goes into the water we can use a life jacket, and there are oxygen masks and air conditioning vents.”