Page 74 - World Airnews Magazine April 2020 Edition

NEWS DIGITAL

HAPPIER MOMENTS IN A

TERRIBLE WEEK FOR THE

AVIATION INDUSTRY

By Seth Miller

KEEPING UP A POSITIVE ATTITUDE IN JAPAN
There’s something particularly special about the way a ground
crew interacts with passengers in Japan. Beyond the fact that there
The past couple weeks offered up plenty of pain for the airline is any interaction at all, it carries the weight of Japanese culture,
industry. There is, however, the occasional bit of fun, interesting or typically with bowing before the entire ground staff wave as planes
even good news coming through in response to the problems. depart. These days, some of those ground crew are going a little
further to make passengers feel welcome and to keep spirits up.
Here are a few of those more positive stories to consider. Some photos from last week circulating on Twitter show ground
handlers for Skymark on the ramp with large signs, thanking their
A NEW WORLD’S LONGEST FLIGHT passengers for travelling.
Connecting France with its overseas territories is a major “Thank you for riding with us even during this difficult time.”
challenge, especially when extended all the way to Tahiti. Multiple “Hokkaido was delicious, right? Come and eat here again!”
carriers typically fly the route, all with a stop in the USA (LAX &
SFO). But with the US travel ban in effect that stop is no longer
viable. Frenchbee announced it would move its connection point
to a technical stop in Point-a-Pitre as a result. The route will fly
over water for nearly all of its 10,633 miles, a testament to the
ETOPS reliability standards of modern aviation.
A new, very oceanic routing for the flights between Paris and
Tahiti, plus one cool non-stop service.
Air Tahiti Nui operates a similar route, typically stopping in
Los Angeles rather than San Francisco. It will move its services
to a tech stop in Vancouver westbound on Saturday and then to
Fort-de-France going forward. Much like the Frenchbee flights, the
routing via the Caribbean is a wholly domestic operation as those
islands are part of France. “RESCUE” FLIGHTS AIRBORNE
But the special flight is the very early Sunday morning departure While certainly not quite the same as the charter repatriation
from Tahiti to Paris. It will not stop in Los Angeles. Neither will it flights from Wuhan that ran in January, there are still some
stop in Vancouver nor the French Caribbean. “rescue” flights operating. British holiday charters carrier Jet2
Indeed, it will not stop at all until it gets to Paris. typically operates a number of flights to Spain’s hottest leisure
As a special, one-off operation flight TN64 will operate from markets. With governments closing their borders to contain the
Papeete to Paris as a nonstop segment. While not a regularly COVID-19 spread, however, the airlines are forced to make tough
scheduled service it will still be a new title holder for the world’s choices. At mid-day Saturday Jet2 chose to cancel all such trips.
longest domestic flight, clocking in just under 9,800 miles. There was just one catch: Many of the planes were already
airborne.
The carrier turned those planes around so as to not strand
passengers in Spain, but that raised issues for the holiday-makers
expecting those planes to bring them home.
Jet2 is now understood to be sending in empty planes to collect
those passengers and get them back home. Admittedly not for the
best reasons, but still a positive to see that happen so quickly. Q

World Airnews | April Extra 2020
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