Night. Over 11,000 meters above sea level. I was on a flight from Bangkok to Vienna, Austria.
Passengers around me were almost all asleep. The cabin was quiet. The only sound was the familiar hum of the airplane slicing through the wind at -60°C.
Something caught my eye outside the window. The moon tonight was full, radiant, casting a silvery glow over the plane’s wing and the long stretch of coastline below. I was mesmerized, and as I reached for my phone to take a photo…
Whoosh!
No sound, but a smaller aircraft suddenly appeared, flying at an incredible speed in the opposite direction, parallel, cutting diagonally beneath the left side of our plane, leaving a long trail of clouds in its wake. Just as quickly, it vanished into the night behind us.
What a surreal sight. Suddenly, I felt strangely connected, knowing that another creature was alive and active in the night, just like me. I turned back to my book, though every so often I stole a glance out the window. After a short while, again—
Whoosh!
Another plane. This one flying in the same direction as ours, speeding past us effortlessly and soon disappearing ahead, leaving behind yet another long cloud trail. A creeping suspicion began to form. Military aircraft? Why so many? Why so close? The moon, still shining brightly, was beautiful yet somehow now unsettling.
Whoosh!
A third plane shot by, perfectly aligned with the cloud trail left by the previous one.
Looking at the map, it seemed we were flying over the Black Sea.
Our plane landed safely in Vienna. A man asked the flight attendant if he could disembark first because the late landing might cause him to miss his connecting flight. The Austrian flight attendant, speaking softly to him, but loud enough for the rest of us who were waiting to hear, explained something like this:
“We kept seeing these aircrafts flying ahead of us, and we didn’t know what was going on. We had to fly around them, which delayed us by over 40 minutes. Sorry about that.”
