This year's best airline April Fools' Day pranks

The first of April traditionally sees airlines unveiling their latest routes and initiatives – of course, that’s if you take them all seriously!

Here's a rundown of this year's best airline-related April Fool's Day pranks.

Scoot launches in-flight yoga on Hong Kong flights

Singapore-based Scoot introduced a new ‘YogaZone’ on flights between Singapore and Hong Kong, allowing passengers to take part in yoga classes when travelling across Asia.

“Operating the wide body Boeing 777-200 means extra leg (and elbow) room to perform the half-moon pose,” the airline’s Facebook page advertises.

Instructors Maria Chan and Jezeral Heng from Bikram Yoga Katong will be on hand "to assist, guide – and untie – if needed." The yoga area is physically separated by bulkheads, which means the Bikram class will not affect the comfort of guests in other areas of the aircraft.

Scandinavian Airlines requires posting of ‘selfie’ to board

A new policy at SAS requires all passengers to “take a Selfie” when boarding a flight, as “SAS wants to increase social media exposure”.

The airline’s employees help to demonstrate the new policy on Twitter:

If you’re not up to speed with the Twittersphere, a ‘selfie’ is self-taken photo, planned to be uploaded to the likes of Facebook or Twitter.

According to Urban Dictionary, a ‘selfie’ “is usually accompanied by a kissy face or the individual looking in a direction that is not towards the camera.”

WestJet converts to metric time

To make things easier for travellers, the Canadian airline WestJet is converting all flights to metric time.

"We recognise that as a Canadian airline we're missing an important component of truly being Canadian and that's a broader adoption of the metric system," said Richard Bartrem, Vice President of Communications at WestJet, in the following YouTube video:

If you missed it, here’s the formula for calculating your flight’s metric departure time:

1. Take your departure time in 24-hour time, represented as HR:MIN.
2. Multiply the HR by 60.
3. Add the MIN.
4. Take the total and divide by 1.44.

On that basis, 5:42pm is 737 milliminutes. Simple, right?

Virgin America flights to feature ‘total temperature control’

Guests on Virgin America flights will soon be able to control their own personal climates at 35,000 feet, with a new partnership with home automation company Nest.

Gone are the days of a simple air vent, with Virgin Group founder Richard Brandon revealing that “it just seems like a no-brainer that each seat should be able to have its own temperature controls.”

Given the complex engineering involved, the fleet-wide installation may take some time.

Southwest launches flights to Mars

Also from the American skies is Southwest, which is set to launch flights to Mars for just shy of US$10,000.

“Our customers have been asking us to serve Mars for years now,” said a spokeswoman for the Dallas-based airline.

If flights to the red planet prove to be successful, Saturn and Jupiter have been named as possible future destinations.

Student Flights offers ‘top-to-tail’ business class

Targeting the business class experience to younger travellers, Student Flights is running a 2-for-1 deal on seats at the pointy end.

“Get a premium travel experience at a backpacker-friendly price with the all new top-to-tail business class seat category that allows you and a friend to share a lie-flat bed in business class and split the cost,” reads the company’s website.

That’s correct – two passengers, one seat.

“Get up close and personal with your business class buddy for a budget friendly chance to experience the bells and whistles at the pointy end of the plane.”

Did you spot any other great airline or travel-related April Fools’ Day pranks? Share them with other AusBT readers below!

Follow Australian Business Traveller on Twitter: we're @AusBT

Chris C.

Chris is a a former contributor to Executive Traveller.