The Mayan prophecy that the world will end on December 21, 2012, is now affecting flight bookings according to fare finder Skyscanner, which reports that its customers have taken a sudden interest in one-way tickets to places rumored to be safe havens from the purging flames.
The villages of Bugarach in Southern France, where a UFO supposedly lies dormant in a mountain, and Şirince in Turkey are the current destinations of choice among believers who would prefer not die. This is presumably why one-way tickets searches to the South of France have increased 41 percent while one-way tickets searches to Turkey have surged by nearly a third.
The searches in question all involve flights arriving at their destinations within a week of the December 21 kablooey.
Though the data does seem to indicate genuine anxiety among a very specific group of travelers, it also begs a question: If the world as we know it is going to end, why bother saving a few hundred dollars on plane tickets?
These folks seem to be hedging their bets.
Meanwhile, the larger trend is probably the increase of arrivals in Mexico, where the apocalypse has turned into an excuse to party and celebrate the native Mayan culture.