Woman Flies Scandinavian Airlines. Then She Looks Out Her Window And Sees How High The Pilot Is Flying: ‘Curvature Of The Earth’

These days, when private citizens can journey to space, it can be tempting to think that commercial flights are so common as to be no big thing. The thing about flying is that even on the most crowded, middle-seat-nightmare of a flight, you are flying.

One TikTok user succinctly captured the slightly frightening, but also perhaps slightly miraculous experience of flying so high in the sky that the curvature of the Earth is visible. Тиле (@defnotatest) posted a video of the view from her airplane window that has been viewed over 7.3 million times.

Her 15-second video clearly shows the airplane soaring over cloud cover. The Scandinavian Airlines logo is visible on the wing. In the background, a simple but vaguely ominous soundtrack from Five Nights at Freddy’s plays. It heightens the sense of dislocation. Out her window, just visible at the edge of the clouds, is a slight downward curvature. It is illustrating the spherical nature, or more technically, the oblate spheroid, of the planet.

It’s general knowledge that the shape of the Earth becomes visible to the human eye at about 35,000 feet. The higher you fly, the more visible it becomes. Perhaps that explains Тиле’s in-camera text saying, “I think the pilot has other ideas.” Perhaps the pilot’s idea is to fly as high as the plane can go.

Earth Curvature Video Attracts Doubters

The comments section is full of users accusing one another of posting AI slop while others post images they swear are authentic.

“I was on a Dreamliner once and we went to 50,000ft. You could actually see the curvature of the earth super visible and it was pure black above. Quite frightening to be honest,” shared Westmid MX.

Another user posted an image purportedly out of an aircraft’s window.  The image is clouds at the bottom of the porthole window and blue-black darkness above. The curvature of the Earth is visible, as is the starboard wing of the plane. “This is not AI… pilot almost had me s*** myself,” wrote WHERETFISBLAIDE.

Because of the fuel efficiency gained at higher altitudes, Hunter said, “You could fly from Maine at 40k ft and glide to England.”

But the best part might be the jokes: image after image of stars, planets, and even the northern lights offer an absurd, but wholly delightful picture of the joy and wonder of flight.

Can Commercial Flights Fly In Space?

Most commercial flights stay between 30,000 and 40,000 feet above sea level. It is ideal for flying because the air is literally thinner, thereby reducing drag and improving fuel efficiency. That height also gets flights above the clouds. Meaning above turbulent weather, and it is better for flight management and safety.

Some private aircraft can cruise between 41,000 and 45,000 feet. It’s safer and more comfortable because higher up there’s even less air traffic. Also, some private jets, including the Gulfstream G650 or Bombardier Global Express, are designed to fly at higher altitudes.

For flights that go even higher than specially built private jets, there are military aircraft. Engineered for combat or reconnaissance, many can fly as high as 60,000 feet above sea level, while other, specialty-built experimental craft have reached 85,000 feet.

But all of this is taking place well within the stratosphere. Because the layer just above it, the mesosphere, is too thin for airplanes. So even for the most advanced, experimental aircraft, there’s a ceiling to how high they can fly.

Space itself, the absence of any atmosphere, starts at the Kármán line, a boundary 62 miles above sea level (327,360 feet). Nowhere near where aircraft, experimental or otherwise, can go. But there’s always a window seat and daydream and that can feel like a small miracle in motion.

BoardingArea reached out to Тиле via Tik Tok direct message and with a comment on the post. We will update this if she replies.

@defnotest Its much darker #fyp #goviral #fypppppppppppppp #flyng #plane ♬ original sound – FNAF is My life