Taiwan Airport offers “overseas” airport amid Covid-19 pandemic

(CNN) – With planes grounded and most tourism on hold during the coronavirus pandemic, one Taiwanese airport has come up with a unique solution to help citizens correct themselves.

Taipei’s Songshan Airport will provide opportunities for 90 people to tour their airport and re-experience the experience of going through immigration, boarding a plane and then disembarking and returning home.

“I can’t leave (Taiwan) and then pretend to go abroad to Songshan,” it says in a flyer posted on the airport’s website.

Songshan is the smaller of Taipei’s two international airports and is located in the city center next to the Keelung River.

International tourism in much of the world has been effectively halted as countries have closed their borders to try to avoid epidemics of the new coronavirus, which has already infected more than 7 million people worldwide.

According to the flyer for the competition, there will be three tours of Songshan Airport on July 2, 4 and 7.

Chih-ching Wang, deputy director of Taipei Songshan Airport, said the tours would last half a day and allow visitors to experience what it would be like to go through immigration and board a plane, after which they would re-enter the country through immigration. .

“People who have not had the opportunity for international flights to Songshan (can) take this opportunity to experience and learn more about the boarding process and the appropriate service facilities,” Wang said.

Wang said participants would be allowed to board the plane as if boarding a trip, after which they would disembark and return by immigration.

The hikers will also be “the first to experience the new facilities at the airport,” the flyers said, adding that visitors can “complete missions” and take home “exclusive mysterious gifts”.