Eclipse Airlines

I don’t know how pleasant it is to fly Alaska Airlines under normal circumstances, but it certainly accommodated its passengers on Tuesday. It rescheduled a flight, postponing its takeoff 25 minutes just to ensure that all the passengers on that flight would be able to see the total solar eclipse which took place over the Pacific and Indian Oceans yesterday.

Joe Rao, an associate astronomer at the American Museum of Natural History’s Hayden Planetarium in New York, called Alaska Airlines last fall, explaining that the flight would be in the right place for the eclipse. The route was expected to encounter the darkest shadow of the moon as it passed over Earth.

Mr. Rao and a dozen of his astronomer friends booked seats so they could see the show from 36,000 feet.

Pretty cool, huh? Unfortunately for us ground-based people in Hawai’i yesterday, there was really thick cloud cover and we didn’t see a damned thing.

This photo provided by Dan McGlaun shows the full shadow of the moon during the total solar eclipse on Tuesday, March 8, 2016, as seen from an airplane over the North Pacific Ocean. So-called eclipse chasers boarded a special flight from Anchorage to Honolulu to view the eclipse on Tuesday from the air. (Dan McGlaun/eclipse2017.org via AP)


This photo provided by Dan McGlaun shows the full shadow of the moon during the total solar eclipse on Tuesday, March 8, 2016, as seen from an airplane over the North Pacific Ocean. So-called eclipse chasers boarded a special flight from Anchorage to Honolulu to view the eclipse on Tuesday from the air. (Dan McGlaun/eclipse2017.org via AP)