Some adventurous travelers are skipping the crowds on the ground to watch Wednesday’s solar eclipse from thousands of feet in the air, thanks to a handful of specially arranged airline and charter flights.
Brussels Airlines is flying 100 people over France to view the partial eclipse, Aerospace Global News reported. The flight, in partnership with the Urania Public Observatory in Switzerland, is sold out. Tickets were about $350 a person.
The aisle seats will be left open to give people more space to see out the windows. The four-hour experience will include about two hours in the sky.
Seeing the phenomena at altitude above the clouds eliminates some of the obstructions that interfere with viewing it from the ground.
The Urania Public Observatory has also partnered with the ASL Group, a European private aviation company, for a solar eclipse flight from Liège, Belgium. A seat on the sold-out private Embraer E135 jet cost about $920 a person.
Another private aviation company, UK-based Air Charter Service, charged people about $1,200 to fly them from London to one of three possible viewing locations for the total eclipse: Valladolid or the Balearic Islands in Spain, or Reykjavik, Iceland.
Food and drinks, including alcohol, will be served on the round-trip flight, and approved telescope equipment will be allowed onboard.
Although not open to the public, Spanish flag carrier Iberia will carry scientists on a special charter flight from Madrid to see the total eclipse over Northern Spain.
The flight will be live-streamed on Iberia’s social media channels, thanks to the Airbus plane’s high-speed Starlink WiFi.
Onboard the Iberia flight will be researchers from the Shelios project, an astronomical scientific initiative led by the Spanish astronomer Miquel Serra-Ricart. They will observe the solar corona and surrounding celestial objects, such as Venus and Mercury.
For those with previously planned flights on Wednesday and hoping to catch a glimpse of the eclipse, it’s possible to see it if the plane happens to be in the right place at the right time and if the sun is visible from their window.
Wednesday’s total solar eclipse will be visible from the Arctic, Iceland, Greenland, northern Spain, and small areas in Siberia and Portugal. The start time will vary by location, and totality is expected to last up to about 2 minutes and 18 seconds, although it will last less than two minutes in many populated land areas.
In North America, a partial eclipse will be visible from parts of Canada, Alaska, and the northern US.
The last total solar eclipse in the US was in April 2024, and the next one won’t happen again until March 2033, but only in Alaska. The continental US will see its next total eclipse in August 2044.
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