flight to nowhere

This term has had a sinister connotation in the past, the context usually being a hijacked aeroplane which is being flown until it crashes.  But the pandemic has changed all that.  The airlines have had their income slashed so they have taken to various ways of making some money. First they sold off everything that wasn’t nailed down. You could order airline meals and have them delivered to your home. Qantas would sell you their first-class PJs so you could snuggle into bed at home and pretend you were flying away. Then in July in Taiwan, Songshan Airport offered people the chance to come and sit in an aeroplane, and other companies followed. The experience was rounded out with an airline meal either in the plane or in the airport. Japan took it one step further and offered a virtual reality experience of flying accompanied by the airline meal.   

Finally some airlines have offered an actual flight taking off and landing in the same location so that no rules are broken. The advantage to the airlines is that they need to take their planes out for a spin every now and then, so having paying passengers helps to defray the costs. And for the passengers it satisfies the craving for travel in an aeroplane and gives them some interesting sightseeing. Qantas will take you over Uluru and the Barrier Reef, flying low, before returning you to your starting point.