Mesmerizing Time-Lapse Shows What It’s Like to be an Airplane Pilot

You’ve probably seen time-lapse videos shot looking out the side of an airplane through a passenger window, but have you ever seen one from the pilot’s point of view? If not, check out the beautiful video above. It was created by pilot Jakub Vlk, who brought his Canon 600D to work and captured photographs across seven days. The video shows Vlk taxiing to the runway, taking off, floating up into the clouds, flying around, and landing.

The time-lapse plays back the images at 8x the speed of realtime. The nasty stuff you see on the windshield immediately after takeoff is the result of insect strikes, not unlike what you might experience while driving around on the freeway.

Much of the flight has “image stabilization” built right in thanks to the aircraft’s autopilot system that usually kicks in 20 seconds after takeoff.

The best part of the video, in our opinion, is rising up into the clouds and flying through them head-on. Even if you’re a diamond status frequent flier, seeing a straight-on view of the plane passing through clouds is completely different than what you see when staring out the small passenger windows. It feels much more like flying.

(via Reddit)