One perk of being an airline pilot is being routinely exposed to some of the best views on (technically, above) Earth. This neat time-lapse compresses an 11-hour flight into four gorgeous minutes.
Filmed on February 17 of this year, this video follows British Airways flight 287 from London to San Francisco with Captain Dave Wallsworth and Senior First Officers Holly Tucker and Mark Dembrey. The flight was aboard G-XLEJ, an Airbus A380-841. The plane's great circle path took it northwest from London, across the North Atlantic Ocean, across the Arctic Ocean, over Greenland, the Davis Strait, Hudson Bay, Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Alberta, Montana, Idaho, Oregon, Nevada, and finally south to San Francisco, an approximately 5,353-mile journey that offered quite the perspective along the way. The plane was also far enough north that as it flew west, it even created its own sunrise, as you'll see about halfway through the time-lapse. If you enjoyed the unique look of a time-lapse from several miles in the air, you should also check out "Flightlapse," which does the same thing, except at night, when the Milky Way steadily hovers over the Earth as the lights of cities pass below.
Lead image by Alan Wilson, used under Creative Commons.
Now THIS is why I love Fstoppers!
Thats great! I'm surprise with the route. Anybody else thought it would be more direct and less circular?
not sure if you are a flat-earth believer :D the world is not flat,
Going "direct" as you think is a longer parallel near to the equator, instead of a shorter one in the north
It's a roughly great circle route, which is the shortest route between two points on a sphere, so it is the most direct.
I was a B777 Captain for United and flew that very route many times. Yes, that is the great circle route which is not a circle at all but a straight line. Easy to see if you use a string to connect London to San Francisco using a globe.