Optical illusion or glitch in the matrix? Plane looks like it’s hanging mid-air
Passengers on a US flight were left stunned after they looked out of their windows and spotted another plane ‘hanging in mid-air’ over San Francisco.
Posted to Reddit, the video attracted thousands of comments who couldn’t understand the reason for the plane being at a standstill.
‘It’s parallax, which is the observed displacement of an object caused by the change of the observer’s point of view. We see it all the time,’ said one commenter.
A pilot told the Daily Mirror the stunt is an optical illusion – that involves two planes landing at the same time and the smaller one moving slower.
‘San Francisco has a procedure when the weather is adequate and both aircraft [sic] can see each other, they can land with less separation laterally than you’d normally need’ he said.
He explained: ‘The aircraft is much lighter than the one where the passenger is filming, so it will be flying much slower – and there could be a strong headwind which means less movement over the ground too.’
Commenters thought otherwise about why the aircraft was hanging in mid-air.
‘No no glitch in the Matrix is the more rational explanation,’ a Reddit user commented.
‘No, I thinks [sic] it’s stopped in time guys, anyone see if it’s still stuck there,’ said another.
Locals to the area said that they have witnessed this spectacle time and time again.
‘As someone who lives it this area and drives on that bridge all the time, I’m sure hundreds or thousands of people on it would have stopped and recorded the plane just floating above them in mid air,’ said a commenter.
‘I live rite [sic] by a airport, they come in all the time going super slow like that. It looks impossible but it’s not,’ said another.
A similar incident occurred in August as a passenger in another plane posted a video to Reddit of a United Airlines aircraft hovering just above land.
The passenger captioned the video: ‘Landing at SFO. What is happening here?’ They ended the caption with an alien emoji and a question mark.
The wing of the moving plane reveals a plane not too far away, completely still and hovering in the air with its wheels out.
‘UFO at SFO,’ said one commenter.
‘It’s a glitch in the matrix,’ said another.
Some commenters appeared to know exactly what was happening to the plane and went on to explain it.
‘It is an optical illusions [sic] caused by a shifting perceptual frame where one plane is moving at a moderate rate of speed, while simultaneously, the other plane is floating perfectly still in one spot in the air,’ said another.
Another said: ‘Tell me you have never had a duel [sic] landing at SFO before posting it on social media. They are famous for it [un]like any other airport in the country.’
Though this moment is rare, it is a beautiful phenomenon to witness from another aircraft.
It is unclear exactly where the floating plane was coming from or if there were passengers onboard.
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