Alex Svanelik, executive director of blockchain analytics platform Nansen, shared with Twitter users his impressions of a recent flight from the Arab Emirate of Abu Dhabi to Singapore.
Entering the cabin of the Boeing-787 (capacity 336 people) of Etihad Airways, Svanelik was amazed to find that he was the only passenger, and the rest of the flight participants were the crew and flight attendants.
Accustomed to working on the Internet, Svanelik immediately logged into Twitter and said that he was flying alone and that the pilot and service personnel were addressing him personally – “Mr. Alexander”. He added that he was assured that the flight will take place in any case – even if another passenger does not appear.
Such episodes, oddly enough, have recently become not so rare. At the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic, some airlines even began to make “phantom flights” – only with the crew and attendants on board, so as not to make radical changes to the flight schedule and to retain the lease of runways at airports.
Newspaper headline:
Flying alone
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