The I've Seen it From the Air thread
 

As a window watcher on my flights, I see many interesting things below me. Some are easy to identify or find out what they are. Others, however, are not so easy.

This thread is for people who have seen interesting things but want to know what they are. Please give a description of what you have seen, where, with as much detail as possible, and perhaps a flight number and date.


I will start with this - while flying over the corner of Denver/Wyoming/Nebraska (flight 2279 MSP-SJC on the 18th of Dec.) I noticed a bunch of bright lights spaced rather interestingly. They were much brighter, and looked to be much bigger, than the standard building lights you normally see, but then again this was way out there. They kind of flickered - I would say they were some kind of fires, but I think we would have been too high to see anything like that. Any ideas?

Christmas lights?

Chernobyl

Grand Canyon

A ski resort?

Grand Canyon and Las Vegas are easily recognized from the air, as are some of the world's tallest mountains.

I've also found it interesting to fly into/out of LA during wildfire season. You really get a better appreciation of how widespread they can be when seen from the air.

One thing I've always wanted to see, but never have, are 4th of July fireworks from the air. This year I flew on the 4th, but it was a daytime flight from DUB to ORD, so no fireworks in sight.

Atlas 5 rocket from the cape on a flight up from tampa.

It was a giant bright streak across the sky.

Flying DAL-MSY back in October, at night (9 PMish). As we got closer to New Orleans (but still at cruising altitude so we were actually nowhere near New Orleans), out of the right side of the plane (so facing south) there were a ton of yellowish/orange lights on the ground. It didn't appear to be a city, I don't think there were any major cities along the flight path. No idea what all those lights were from, but there were a ton of them. Does anyone have any clue as to what it could be? Oil refineries along the gulf was my best guess

Actually, I can do better than approximate date and time. Here's the flight: http://flightaware.com/live/flight/S...210Z/KDAL/KMSY

There's a fairly large windfarm up that way. I don't know if it's lit up at night, but it could've been that.

I usually see my office building (in downtown ATL) as we're coming down for landing. In my mind's eye, I can see the pile of work sitting on my desk, waiting for me to return to it. . . .

The most bizzare thing I saw, I was able to easily identify: Machine gun flare.

I was on a flight in 2004 coming into LAX at night. About 1500 above the ground, just before touchdown, I looked down into the streets and saw machine gun flare. Ahhh....LA. We love it!

On occasion, I can see the building where I live while approaching or taking off.

Same here. If landing on 33L I can spot my home from the left side of the plane.

On the seatback

http://gardyloo.us/photogallery/phot...7JS%20027a.jpg

Out the window

http://gardyloo.us/photogallery/phot...7JS%20029a.jpg

QF63, SYD-JNB, August 2005

Yeah, 9 times out of 10 I end up seeing my office building in downtown St. Louis on takeoff and landing. Since I don't fly for work and all of my travel is personal, the office is the last place I want to see. Especially when landing, that's a reminder that vacation is over and it's back to work the next day.

Whilst flying back to the UK from Rome a few years ago in wonderful clear skies above the clouds, I spotted a weird contrail coming from what I think was a turboprop plane which was ahead of us. It looked more like smoke as it was black and it had maintained a very well defined helix shape. Has anyone else seen something like this?