Airline sells joy flight to nowhere

Airline sells joy flight to nowhere

'A 'flight to nowhere' in Australia has sold out in 10 minutes. Qantas has put on the seven-hour flight, which will both take off and land in Sydney and give customers a scenic route across the country for people who have been deprived of travel during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The flight will take place on October 10, and will give those on board the chance to enjoy views over the Great Barrier Reef.

A Qantas spokesperson said: "It's probably the fastest-selling flight in Qantas history. People clearly miss travel and the experience of flying.

"If the demand is there, we'll definitely look at doing more of these scenic flights while we all wait for borders to open."

The airline has also enabled 'joy flights' to Antarctica to take place.

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Football team clobbered while socially distancing

An amateur German football team lost a match 37-0 after socially distancing from their opponents. SG Ripdorf/Molzen II were only able to field seven players because they didn't feel it was safe after another team had a player who tested positive for coronavirus.

The team would have been fined PS180 if they had forfeited the game, so they decided to go ahead with the game -- in spite of the drubbing.

Ripdorf Co-Chairman Patrick Ristow told ESPN: "We are thankful those seven players volunteered, otherwise the club would have faced a 200 euros fine for abandoning the match.

"That's a lot of money for us, especially amid the pandemic."

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Scientists win award for work with alligator

Alligators on helium have helped a team of scientists land an award. Stephan Reber and his colleagues have won the Ig Nobel Prize for their studies on how reptiles communicate, which featured the comic aspect of alligators being given helium to alter the sounds they make.

Reber was honoured to receive the Ig, a spoof of the Nobel Science Prize.

He explained that the study aimed to discover if alligators could reveal their body size through vocalisations.

Reber told BBC News: "The resonances in your vocal tract sound lower overall if you're larger, because it's a larger space in which the air can vibrate. We didn't know if reptiles actually had resonances. Frogs, amphibians don't, for example. So we needed a proof of concept that crocodilians actually have resonances."

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Dentist imprisoned for crazy stunt

A dentist who performed a tooth extraction on a hoverboard has been sentenced to 12 years in prison. Seth Lookhart filmed the incident in Alaska on his smartphone, which showed him performing the procedure on a sedated patient.

He was charged with reckless endangerment and illegally practising dentistry.

Veronica Wilhelm, whose tooth was removed by Lookhart, hit out at him at the trial.

She said: "What you did was outrageous, narcissistic and crazy. I think you have to be pretty narcissistic -- you must be pretty full of yourself to think you can pull someone's tooth out on a hoverboard."

Sentencing Judge Michael Wolverton added: "In reviewing all this over and over again, I have this visceral response -- you darn near killed some people."