Image: FlightRadar24
With Valentine’s Day 2018 underway, Virgin Atlantic airlines decided to do something special with their new aircraft to put some “love in the air.” The carrier flew a new Airbus A330 along a heart-shaped flight path over the southwestern tip of England around lunchtime today. The flight was part of a training mission for crew; no passengers were on the short flight that flew round-trip from London’s Gatwick airport.
Virgin Atlantic, which has a tradition of giving female names to their fleet, identified the plane as the “Honkytonk Woman.” The airline also tweeted a video of the flight path, adding the hashtag #LoveIsInTheAirbus.
This isn’t the first time pilots have “drawn” pictures in the sky. With the test flight of their new 787 aircraft, Boeing sketched out a giant outline of the plane last year. Early in 2017, an effort to draw awareness to testicular cancer went viral, leading many pilots to sketch a penis in the sky. Drawing a penis with jet contrails also got US Navy pilots in trouble last November.
