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Eclipse viewing at 30k feet: Delta to offer path-of-totality flight
- classified 3y agoOK, not a new feature of the Eclipse IDE, but still a nice thing.
- iLoveOncall 3y agoI don't really get the point. 30,000 feet of altitude is only 0.002% closer to the moon than 0. Is this going to change anything? Seems like just a marketing stunt (which, of course it is, but a pointless one at that).
- avandermeulen 3y agoThe path of totality is only 115 miles wide so from 30,000 feet you would be able to see edges of the shadow below you. You’re also guaranteed to be able to see the eclipse because you’re flying above any cloud cover.
- SkyPuncher 3y agoI imagine it’s pretty cool watching the shadow be cast over the earth.
- elif 3y agoWouldn't it be the same experience you get on a sunset flight followed by a sunrise flight? It's not like you'd see a spotlight of darkness, it's a gradient and likely too large to see moon curvature.
- dylan604 3y agoYou're trying to conflate the sunset terminator vs the very small and well defined shadow of the moon itself. Totally different concepts. The shadow of the moon is a spotlight of darkness. This is so not the same thing as the Earth rotating out of view of the sun. For example: https://image.pbs.org/poster_images/assets/buac18-vid-epicmoonshadow-poster.png https://image.pbs.org/poster_images/assets/buac18-vid-epicmo...
- TheCaptain4815 3y agoMajority of the path has an extremely high chance of cloud coverage (70%), so maybe this alleviates that? https://eclipsophile.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/April-NoAm-cloud.png https://eclipsophile.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/April-No...
- ethanbond 3y agoIt'd definitely alleviate it. I'm going to Vermont to try to see it (coinciding with my wedding) and the weather is really the only thing worrying me at the moment.
- AnimalMuppet 3y agoCongratulations! If you have bad weather, it may ruin the eclipse. Don't let it ruin the wedding by letting it ruin your attitude.
- ethanbond 3y agoOh yeah, absolutely prepared for it haha. I appreciate it! I was able to catch the last eclipse in 2016/17 (?) and am using the wedding to trick all my loved ones into (hopefully) getting to experience one too.
- hunter2_ 3y agoIf you look at a map of the "path of totality" for a total solar eclipse, think of it as a series of small time windows only a few minutes long, where one window ends another begins. I say that as if it's discrete, but really it's continuous and overlapping. Anyway, totality will begin in Texas at 1:27 PM CT and end in Maine at 3:35 PM ET, which is a little more than an hour. So theoretically you could be traveling at the same speed as the eclipse, from Texas to Maine in that hour, seeing an eclipse the whole time instead of just a few minutes! Of course, the article makes no such claim that this is their plan. After all, planes don't go 2000 MPH. But they do go 600+ MPH, so maybe if things go perfectly you'll have 20 minutes of eclipse. Call it 10 minutes due to inability to rapidly correct for a slightly wrong departure time. Better than the 4 minutes you'd get standing still.
- gowld 3y agoTotality isn't very interesting for longer periods of time, on a plane It's just dark. The transition toward and away from totality is interesting.
- FireBeyond 3y agohttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ion2QSeGcIQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ion2QSeGcIQ
- hunter2_ 3y agoTrue, and the peculiar reaction of animals (brief nocturnal activity) won't be very noticeable from the air either.
- throwaway_13579 3y ago> planes don't go 2000 MPH SR-71: hold my beer
- crazygringo 3y agoWell, it guarantees you won't have clouds blocking it. So if turns out to be totally overcast wherever you would have been on the ground, this is going to change everything.
- jsjohnst 3y ago> Well, it guarantees you won't have clouds blocking it. No it doesn’t. Very low probability, yes, guaranteed to not be clouds, no.
- sumeruchat 3y agoHow can there be a cloud cover at FL300 so large that the plane cant navigate out of it?
- jsjohnst 3y agoLots of scenarios where the pilot isn’t allowed to diverge from a flight path without getting into how freak events happen with the weather all the time. Cirrocumulus clouds are common on that flight path and can extend up to FL450. Is it rare that they are that high, for sure, but can it happen, definitely. Cirrostratus clouds are also a possibility and they often extend up to FL400. Whenever the sky has a soft white haze, these are a common cause. Will either of those guaranteed ruin an eclipse, probably not. But still saying guaranteed no cloud cover obstructing the view is very much inaccurate imho.
- sumeruchat 3y agoYeah when normal people talk (not pilots) an event with >99 percent probability should be deemed a certainty. As a pilot however i agree with you that you absolutely cannot make any assumptions about cloud cover
- jsjohnst 3y agoDepends on how you define normal people. If you are someone who is ponying up $25k+ for this flight on secondary markets you also should know that the chance is non-zero, albeit close.
- wolverine876 3y agoIn addition to other comments: You see it for much longer than if you are in one place.
- solarhexes 3y agoI wonder how well you’ll be able to see the sun? It seems like you might struggle to look high enough as the flight is midday?
- 01HNNWZ0MV43FF 3y agoOTOH you might be able to see the dark circle as it streaks across the ground, something you can't see from most places at ground level. (Maybe on a mountain I guess)
- mackman 3y agoStory time. In the last total eclipse, I was commuting from Boston to San Francisco a bunch and planned my flight to coincide with the path of totality. I brought enough eclipse glasses for the entire flight. The flight attendants were kind enough to distribute them and even gave them to the pilot and copilot. The flight crew was excited about it and actually got approval a change to their flight plan so that they could bank the plane so that people on both sides of the plane could actually look out the window to see the eclipse. This is back in the days of Virgin America, and as a thank you they sent me a little desk statue of a Virgin America plane. I keep it on my desk in fond memory of my favorite airline. Also got some cool photos of the flight crew and passengers all wearing eclipse glasses. (https://mackman.net/va.jpg https://mackman.net/va.jpg)
- iLoveOncall 3y agoHow did you explain the hundreds of pairs of glasses to TSA?
- mackman 3y agoI explained what they were for :-)
- hunter2_ 3y agoAny worry about counterfeit glasses? I recall during the last eclipse it was a bit tricky: product detail pages would often list some ISO numbers or whatever, but no reason to trust that, so instead you could find a short list of manufacturer names on some highly reputable website (maybe a government or health site?) but then don't use Amazon due to the commingling problem...
- smashed 3y agohttps://eclipse.aas.org/eye-safety/viewers-filters https://eclipse.aas.org/eye-safety/viewers-filters And buy direct, don't use Amazon because of the counterfeit risks.
- tantalor 3y agoUnclear why this is special. Does it fly along the path, extending it? Is that feasible?
- ethanbond 3y agoYes, you can chase the eclipse if you're traveling fast enough. Other nice thing: no potential for your entire eclipse hunting expedition to be ruined by bad weather.
- jsjohnst 3y ago> Other nice thing: no potential for your entire eclipse hunting expedition to be ruined by bad weather. There is definitely a possibility of there being cloud cover, even at FL300, to cover the path of that flight. Assuming they would be allowed up to fly above FL380 by ATC, even less likely, but still not zero potential.
- gowld 3y agoIt has other problems though. It's more like watching a video of the Eclipse from an uncomfortable seat at a bad angle. A major part of the eclipse experience is observing its interactions with the world. There's no much world to interact with at 30K feet, besides one big shadow. This seems like a thing where the main value is that it costs more and is less accessible, so you can brag about it.
- yodon 3y agoSucks to have a window seat on the wrong side of the plane
- ourmandave 3y agoWonder woman's invisible plane is really the way to go.
- ta1243 3y agoUnless you really need to go....
- stavros 3y agoHow are invisible planes not completely black inside? No light is reaching them.
- troymc 3y agoThey have light sources on the inside of the plane, like lamps and stuff.
- stavros 3y agoGood point... You can't see anything outside the plane though, no?
- 93po 3y agoi imagine that either the magic that provides the plane this ability can magically duplicate the light, or the sufficiently advanced technology also has cameras to view the light and a way to mimic it on the interior of the plane
- lifeisstillgood 3y agoSurely (I am not a physicist) one kind of an invisible plane Would be one where all the light that hits it is absorbed - comes into it but does not Reflect off - so the light would be incredibly bright inside. Or would that be just a hole in the sky? I mean that would be a radar invisible plane. Would the scattering of the light around the rest of the sky be enough to occlude your “hole” ?
- elif 3y agoMaybe it's something about the hours of prep before and after, viewing at most half of the event through an 11 inch window, with droning noise surrounded by people climbing over you to see the window, but I think you could get a better experience watching on a 4k computer monitor with a dimming script set up for your room lights.
- dylan604 3y agoI really hope this is a sad joke vs how you normally experience life.
- elif 3y agoNo actually I'm road tripping to experience the event with my friends instead of cramming it into an instagrammable tokenized experience in a cabin full of strangers
- kyawzazaw 3y agoYou don't have to do this, you know?
- dylan604 3y agoIf you don't live in the path of totality, then how do you propose doing it?
- kyawzazaw 3y agonot sure what you mean by your comment. What I meant was to address the extreme negativity of the person to whom I am replying to that he doesn't have to participate in this flight that is being sold as a ticket.
- dkjaudyeqooe 3y agoEndless hours in a car doesn't sound like that much fun either.
- ourmandave 3y agoObligatory PSA, because Amazon will be filled with unsafe viewing glasses. https://www.planetary.org/articles/are-your-solar-eclipse-glasses-safe https://www.planetary.org/articles/are-your-solar-eclipse-gl...
- goda90 3y agoIf you can be on the ground in the path of totality, I highly recommend it. Especially go someplace with more nature. The birds and bugs will change their behavior as totality happens. Very cool experience that really tickles basic human instincts.
- skinner927 3y agoThe birds and the bugs were undoubtably the most unexpected part of the whole experience. I think about it often actually, haha.
- sokoloff 3y agoAdding on to this, I'd recommend getting to totality and not thinking "99% occlusion is probably 99% as good." For the 2017 one, we went to a field about 100 miles from where we were staying and compared our experience to our hosts who stayed behind because of cloud cover forecast for the day. Clouds cleared for both of us, but from the discussions, it was worth going that 100 miles.
- noSyncCloud 3y ago99% totality is 1% of the experience.
- ta1243 3y agoHad that in 1999 in the UK, despite the complete overcast sky, it still went dark, and the birds and bugs still did stuff, and there was a general feeling of "something is wrong"
- ericbarrett 3y agoSeconded! Also check out a complex shadow (like that of a bush) just before or after totality. The camera obscura effect will generate many images of the eclipse crescent, it's really uncanny.
- roughly 3y agoYes! This was absolutely surreal - one of those weird little things that all of the sudden your animal brain is pegging as "Something's amiss." Really helped the build-up to the totality.
- fghorow 3y agoI just looked. It's sold out.
- djsavvy 3y agoI checked ——- it’s sold out. :(
- Lendal 3y agoI bet Neil deGrasse Tyson will be on that flight.
- Lance_ET_Compte 3y agoI lived in the UK when there was a total eclipse there. BA flew a Concorde (at speed!) to chase the shadow for as long as possible. It was still not that long ~30 minutes or so? and the windows were tiny and thick, so I heard it was not that grand. Of course, those on the ground had the typical cloudy weather. Where I was it was 98%, which was still "dusk". It was still neat!
- Symbiote 3y agoI remember seeing a total eclipse in Cornwall in the 1990s, with a clear sky. I suspect my dad would have been reluctant to drive all that way, but I'm glad he did.
- qingcharles 3y agoIt was 1999. I slept outside on the grass the night before, down at Lizard's Point. Where I was, the weather was also great and got a clear view of the eclipse which was fantastic.
- Symbiote 3y agoI checked the family video, and it was actually fairly overcast on Dartmoor, with just some brief and tiny breaks in the cloud — enough to see the total eclipse, but not the sun's corona.
- enriquto 3y agoWas it the 30/6/1973 [0] ? There's an excellent book [1] about this adventure written by its senior scientific advisor (Pierre Léna). The flight went under the shadow of the moon for 74 minutes ! [0] https://www.ina.fr/ina-eclaire-actu/30-juin-1973-le-concorde-poursuit-une-eclipse-solaire https://www.ina.fr/ina-eclaire-actu/30-juin-1973-le-concorde... [1] https://www.fnac.com/a17820796/Pierre-Lena-Soleils-eclipses https://www.fnac.com/a17820796/Pierre-Lena-Soleils-eclipses
- Lance_ET_Compte 3y ago
- yakito 3y agoFor anyone interested in this I recommend checking out these 2 articles: Alaska Airlines chasing the Great American Eclipse - https://news.alaskaair.com/alaska-airlines/solar-eclipse/ https://news.alaskaair.com/alaska-airlines/solar-eclipse/ This annular eclipse tour by Delta - https://skyandtelescope.org/astronomy-travel/2021-annular-eclipse-flight/ https://skyandtelescope.org/astronomy-travel/2021-annular-ec...
- bashinator 3y agoThe most amazing thing I experienced during the last annular eclipse was the thousands of crescent-shaped shadows from wherever a pinpoint of light shone through, say a pair of tree leaves. It was legit astonishing; literally every surface was covered in these crescent refractions of the eclipse. I doubt very much you'd experience anything like that on an airplane, but possibly that's just me having sour grapes this time.
- jessriedel 3y agoYou can experience them anywhere the sunlight is passing through small holes. Punch a bunch of holes through paper with a needle or pencil.
- Hnrobert42 3y agoI thought the same thing! Even cooler was that I noticed them before the eclipse and took a picture. Walking back to my car after the eclipse, the crescents had flipped! Just for you, I created an Imgur account. Cheers. https://imgur.com/a/TwlmbDw https://imgur.com/a/TwlmbDw
- crazygringo 3y agoThank you!! I haven't seen this and was having trouble picturing it, now it makes perfect sense. It's not the edges of the leaves but the pinholes between overlapping leaves that allows the shape through.
- deinonychus 3y agoThanks for sharing this; I wasn’t able to picture what they were describing.
- sagarm 3y agoYeah, I was amazed to learn that dappled sunlight is actually thousands of pinhole images of the sun, and during an eclipse all the little circles turn into crescents!
- e28eta 3y ago
- AndrewKemendo 3y agoTo put the carbon emissions of the flight into perspective: 1. Approximately 22,200 kWh of electricity usage. 2. 674 kg (or about 1,486 pounds) of grazed beef. 3.1-2 new freshwater wells in rural areas
- smileysteve 3y agoOn the bright side, Delta buys carbon credits for all of its flights. https://www.delta.com/us/en/about-delta/sustainability https://www.delta.com/us/en/about-delta/sustainability *note there are lawsuits on the dubiousness of the credits and the focus on carbon removal.
- Panino 3y agoAlthough my first thought was also the climate emissions, we have to be careful with these numbers, as 1kWh of electricity in Sweden is very different from 1kWh of electricity in Poland. https://app.electricitymaps.com/map https://app.electricitymaps.com/map Poland is about 30x dirtier than Sweden. World numbers vary all over the place. Similarly for beef - are the cattle raised under conventional agriculture (with maximum emissions) or regenerative agriculture (with minimum emissions)? By my rough count, an example round-trip flight for this trip is about 2600 miles (~4200km) with an approximate climate cost of about 1100kg per person. This accounts for the fact that airline emissions do roughly 3x the damage as expected (compared to ground transportation) as contrails form cirrus clouds which "are too thin to reflect much sunlight, but ice crystals inside them can trap heat. Unlike low-level clouds that have a net cooling effect, these contrail-formed clouds warm the climate... A 2011 study suggests that the net effect of these contrail clouds contributes more to atmospheric warming than all the carbon dioxide (CO2) produced by planes since the dawn of aviation." https://www.science.org/content/article/aviation-s-dirty-secret-airplane-contrails-are-surprisingly-potent-cause-global-warming https://www.science.org/content/article/aviation-s-dirty-sec... We have ways to make electricity and food carbon-cheap, and potentially even carbon-negative, but the same is not currently true for flying. I think we should move to passenger ships for transoceanic trips and electrified trains for overland travel.
- AndrewKemendo 3y ago
- interestica 3y agoGood choice in aircraft for the flight. The Airbus A220-300 windows are a little bigger than 737s and at a better viewing height: > Another passenger experience factor determined by the manufacturer is the aircraft window. In this case, the 737's windows are smaller - 10" x 14" (25.4cm x 35.56cm). The A220's windows are a bit larger at 11" x 16" or 28 x 40.6cm. In addition to a difference in window size, the position of windows is different for each type as well. Window-seat passengers on the 737 (the MAX, but also all others) will find that they have to bend down slightly to look straight out the window. For those who love to get a good look out at the horizon or the world outside, the A220's windows are preferable. https://simpleflying.com/the-airbus-a220-300-vs-boeing-737-max-7-2023/ https://simpleflying.com/the-airbus-a220-300-vs-boeing-737-m...
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- lostlogin 3y ago> The Airbus A220-300 windows are a little bigger than 737s Not always…
- pquki4 3y agoStupid question: what if the flight is delayed by 3 hours because of bad weather or air traffic control?
- nlunbeck 3y agoDoesn't seem like a stupid question to me. Would love to know their terms on this, eg. partial refunds? Voucher for next eclipse in a few years?
- dwighttk 3y agoLooks like 2045 is the next continental us eclipse (a couple before then kinda touch but not really cut a swath) Via https://time.com/4897581/total-solar-eclipse-years-next/ https://time.com/4897581/total-solar-eclipse-years-next/
- ipqk 3y ago> DL 5699, DTW-HPN, 2:59 pm EST departure, ERJ-175 > DL 924, LAX-DFW, 8:40 am PST departure, A320 > DL 2869, LAX-SAT, 9:00 am PST departure, A319 > DL 1001, SLC-SAT, 10:08 am MST departure, A220-300 > DL 1683, SLC-AUS, 9:55 am MST departure, A320 The eclipse will happen after Daylight Saving Time began in March. If an airline can't even get time zones correct...
- electrosphere 3y agoYou USA people are so lucky living in a country with a large landmass https://www.timeanddate.com/eclipse/ https://www.timeanddate.com/eclipse/ and https://www.timeanddate.com/eclipse/solar/2024-april-8 https://www.timeanddate.com/eclipse/solar/2024-april-8
- gumby 3y agoWe’re all pretty lucky to live on a planet where the moon the the right size and position so this can happen. Have to mention the famous Connie Willis eclipse short story “And Come from Miles Around” (it’s collected in “fire watch” and I won’t spoil it for you).
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- at_a_remove 3y agoI figured out an odd place in the path of totality last go around that would have nobody present, ran my plan a month beforehand. It was a dried-up mine tailing lake, so it is more or less a patch of desert, about a mile long and a quarter-mile across. Even the locals forgot about it. I must have been the only person for a couple of miles. Had everything timed to the second, even the soundtrack. Aside from the obvious songs, every solar eclipse is a new moon, so Duran Duran's "New Moon on Monday" (it was a Monday, and will be this time as well) fit for the trip down. "Thus Spoke Zarathustra" played faintly just as the sun started coming back.
- divan 3y agoI always wanted to write an app that will find flights for every solar eclipse (and suggest the seat, of course), but it never got enough priority in my backlog. Glad to see airlines already implementing this idea to some extent!
- swozey 3y agoI spent way too long looking for the price + availability. They're sold out and got up to around $1200 ea. This thread sold me on experiencing 100% totality so I'm bummed.
- fortenforge 3y agoI think this airplane is not the best way to experience full totality—especially if it's your first time seeing a total solar eclipse. There still should be plenty of opportunities to see the eclipse from the ground in April!
- binarymax 3y agoTravel to a point in the path and view from the comfort of the ground :) https://eclipse2024.org/eclipse_cities/statemap.html https://eclipse2024.org/eclipse_cities/statemap.html
- sonofhans 3y agoI think I’d lose important things seeing it from an airplane. One of the things I love about an eclipse is how the world around me reacts to it. I saw one in the middle of Wyoming in 2017, in the middle of the day. Every animal seemed to think it was night. Wolves started howling, moths came out of the grass and flew around, daytime insects disappeared. I saw a partial eclipse in New Delhi in the 1970s, and it was very different. The city was a ghost town — everyone was inside waiting it out. It was hard even to find a taxi, in one of the largest cities in the world. So yeah, seeing it from an airplane sounds cool. It wouldn’t capture everything I’ve loved and enjoyed about eclipses.
- FlyingSnake 3y agoIn India eclipses were considered a bad omen until recent times and people would hide themselves indoors during eclipses. With education and progress it has improved considerably and such superstitions are dying fast.
- airstrike 3y agoBut maybe it counts as some new experience? Wyoming was different from New Delhi which would be different from a plane Until someone tries it, we won't know if it's worthwhile. Even if it doesn't live up to a "better" experience, we will know more about those experiences than we did before Trying new things is the whole reason for existing
- AnimalMuppet 3y agoHearing wolves howl during an eclipse would be just awesome. I was in Idaho, but I didn't get that...
- tommywiseausmom 3y agoincredible
- wolverine876 3y agoWhat does it take for Delta to get clearances to fly a route like this one? Can they just fly at a different altitude to avoid all the routes they cross? Also, isn't there a risk of lots of commercial and private planes all following it together?
- dghlsakjg 3y agoTo fly up high (like this flight) you are required to file a flight plan, but that's about it, the FAA isn't particularly concerned with why, they just need you to tell them where and when. It's pretty easy to deconflict. There is A LOT of sky. The path of totality will be 115 miles, which means that at any given moment during the eclipse there is roughly 14k square miles that can see it. Plus planes have 20k+ feet of controlled airspace to play with. For the smaller planes lower down, they don't even need to file if they don't want. They can go VFR and just see and avoid. The amount of aircraft flying around NYC airspace is far higher density on any given afternoon than something like this.
- dmitrygr 3y agosold out already
- bensherman 3y agoWhat happens when everyone on a plane shifts to one side of the plane at once while at full speed?
- ibejoeb 3y agoI booked DL 1001, SLC-SAT. If anyone else is on there, hmu. I need to figure out which side of the plane to sit on...