Passengers huddled near the windows as the plane made a series of S-turns. However, during the flight, the angle of the sun was skewed in the sky, making it difficult to see anything without tilting your head. “Did you see that?” questions bounced around the plane.
Kyle Carter, a 40-year-old stay-at-home dad and private pilot from Orlando, said he didn't see much of the eclipse during his flight, but was satisfied with the experience.
“All I wanted to see was the shadow running towards us from behind, rather than the actual eclipse itself,” he said. “I saw it. I saw the darkness coming towards us.”
Attorney Scott Keyes and his 8-year-old daughter Gabrielle flew in from Atlanta. He said they “caught a piece” of the eclipse.
“It was a fun community experience, even though I didn’t fully understand it,” he said. He noted that clouds have been a problem for many people on the ground, so it's unclear whether they would have seen more if they had traveled elsewhere. “I was happy that people saw what we had done.”
Before those on the plane were fully treated for several minutes, the plane's lights dimmed and the sky outside became dark. Flight attendants and pilots issued several warnings. Screens behind the seats showed scenes from other locations along the route, including Mexico, Texas and even Indianapolis.
Prior to the eclipse, several airlines, including Delta Air Lines, United Airlines, Southwest Airlines, and Alaska Airlines, will be flying across the country, providing a perfect opportunity to fly to the best viewing spots. was announced. They were careful to include caveats and made no promises.
“Delta's flight plans are designed to maximize flight time, but are subject to change due to factors beyond Delta's control, such as weather and air traffic control. “This may impact timing and aircraft,” the airline warned.
Delta Air Lines operated two Eclipse-only flights from Texas on Monday, including one from Austin. The airline had been planning such a moment for months.
In October, operational planners mentioned the upcoming solar eclipse. Chris Crisham, the company's flight director, said in a phone interview that this led to brainstorming and exchanging ideas.
“And dot dot dot, here we are,” he said.
Logistics sounds like an SAT word problem. If a plane is flying at 400 miles per hour and the moon's shadow is hurtling at 1,600 miles per hour, where will they overlap and for how long? Let's also include the angle of the sun.
“Fortunately, I'm a math major, and I didn't have to bring any trigonometric functions into this equation,” Krisham said. Flight planning software did the heavy lifting for us.
The company first announced the Austin-Detroit flight in mid-February, saying it was “specifically designed to allow Umbraphiles to spend as much time as possible directly on the Path of Integrity.” That flight sold out in one day, so Delta quickly added another flight. This time it's from Dallas.
Jamie Lalounis, a Washington, D.C.-based travel industry analyst with UpgradedPoints.com, didn't have any special plans to see the eclipse. He was intrigued by Delta's inaugural flight, but it sold out before he could secure his seat. Then he saw a news release about the Dallas flight.
“I had a reservation within 30 seconds,” he said. “I dropped everything.”
He said he dropped 107,500 air miles, worth about $1,149, to book a first-class seat on the left side of the plane before departure. Anyone who heard about this project assumed he was extremely interested in solar eclipses, but he said he was more of an aviation buff.
“They all think I'm some kind of meteorologist, but I wonder if I'm a physics expert,” Larounis, 34, said.
The last time the eclipse was visible from North America in 2017, photographer John Carmichael tried to score a seat on a special Alaska Airlines flight to capture it from the sky. He lost, but by perusing flight schedules and comparing them to the eclipse's path, he found a Southwest flight from Portland, Oregon, to St. Louis.
With the help of pilots (one of whom cleaned the window outside Carmichael's seat before takeoff), he took approximately 1,200 photographs, forming an iconic photographic mosaic documenting the eclipse.
Carmichael, who has photographed solar eclipses from land, said there are pros and cons to being in the air. The experience on the ground is more immersive. You'll see temperature changes, wildlife reactions, and your view won't be obscured by parts of the plane.
But in the sky, clouds are much less likely to get in the way. And it's possible to see the moon's shadow moving across the Earth from the ground, he said. This sight was invisible to eclipse watchers for most of human history.
“We've only been flying as humans for a little over 100 years. That's just a moment in time,” he said. “The fact that we are part of this huge, incredible celestial system gives us a sense of the scale of the universe. The moon's shadow is projected onto Earth and moves across it. You can actually see it.”
