An American airline company is promising travellers a once in a lifetime experience as it gives a close-up view of the total at 30,000-feet.
offered two special flights for the viewing of ‘The Great American Eclipse’ while soaring in the skies on Monday. The rare natural event is set to darken skies across , the United States and Canada on Monday afternoon. Those on the “path of totality” will be plunged into complete darkness as the moon passes between the sun and the Earth – with the next total eclipse in North America not expected until 2044, according to NASA .
The first Delta craft holding 130 passengers is set to fly from Austin, to Detroit, Michigan departing at 12.15pm CT; the second from Dallas, Texas also to Detroit with its 194 passengers taking off at 12.30pm CT. Both sold out in under 24 hours, according to the airline.
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The total solar eclipse is set to sweep across parts of North America on Monday (Getty Images)Totality will be visible in southern Texas at just after 2.30pm EDT before reaching the Midwest about half an hour later. Another 20 minutes later, it will likely be visible from the Great Lakes region before leaving the US to enter Canada by around 3.35pm EDT.
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The flights, which start at $749 (£593), were strategically chosen to follow the path of the eclipse for optimum viewing experiences. The planes both boast extra-large windows and will perform a 30-degree bank on both sides of the aircraft, allowing passengers to ogle on at the eclipse for four minutes, while sporting their eclipse specs.
“I think that we're gonna be able to provide a really unique experience,” Delta Air Lines Captain Phil Marshall, who will be in the cockpit for one of the flights, told CBS. “This is fantastic for me. It's always, every day's like a dream come true for us as pilots.”
Delta Air Line passengers can view the spectacle at 30,000ft (Getty Images)As the moon’s shadow races across the Earth at a whopping 1,500mph, Delta's operations and customer centre was challenged to sync the flights as best as possible. “We're traveling at about 400 miles per hour, so the sun is actually going to be catching up to us,” Flight Superintendent Erin Wehrman said.
“So we're taking off before it even hit the US border on the south end, and it will catch up to us.”
Delta Air Lines isn’t the only company capitalising off North America’s solar eclipse. An estimated $1.5 billion will be injected into communities lying on the path of totality, an economics professor from the University of Texas claimed.
Around 90% of Airbnb’s lodgings along the path have been occupied ahead of the rare event, the company confirmed. Three of Amazon’s top-ten selling items on Friday were solar eclipse glasses, according to the website
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