Mat Schulz – the artistic director and co-founder of Unsound Festival, as well as a long-term resident of Kraków’s Kazimierz district – reflects on a year of COVID-19 and how we might reappraise our approach to travel and tourism in light of the pandemic and incessant gentrification.
In May 2020, when most commercial flights were grounded, planes full of people began taking to the skies – and returning to their point of origin. These ‘flights to nowhere’ were a strange side effect of the pandemic. A Qantas plane took off from Sydney, then made a gigantic seven-hour joyride loop over the Gold Coast and Great Barrier Reef, flying low over Uluru and Bondi Beach. Tickets sold out in 10 minutes, a Qantas record. Needless to say, there was something very off about flying people in a long, pointless circle over the continent, while simultaneously tens of thousands of Australians were stranded abroad, and the national carrier had entirely given up on flying them back.
Shorter ‘flights to nowhere’ were organized by Royal Brunei, Air Taiwan and All Nippon Airways. Taking things a step further – or, rather, backwards – Singapore Airlines offered customers an airline dinner service aboard a grounded Airbus at Singapore’s Changi Airport. This was not simply a journey without a destination – it was a journey without a journey.
Not that that would have mattered to ‘travellers’ eager to project their trips through the prism of a smartphone. For some time now social media has not only documented but shaped our travels. And during a pandemic, when people are grounded, the classic window shot of a jetliner wing tip, blue sky and fluffy clouds gains far greater currency.
In February, in China, in the middle of the world’s first COVID-19 lockdown, people began using objects and smartphones to film the illusory vantage point of a passenger as a plane was taking off. Later, as the virus spread around the globe, so did the viral challenge. Using toilet seats and chairs for windows, hairdryers for sound and pages from magazines, people simulated the perfect Instagram travel video, pointing to the empty heart of both 21st-century tourism and social media.
Still on the ground, consumers nostalgic for air travel have bought airline meals offered by Garuda Airlines, Thai Airlines and Cathay Pacific. Qantas Airlines have even offered ‘care packs’ online, containing a business class ‘sleeper suit’, amenity kit, Tim Tam biscuits and smoked almonds – they sold out in just a
