Plane appears to float mid-air in optical illusion video at SFO

An airline passenger has captured an extremely rare optical illusion, which shows a plane hanging perfectly still mid-air in San Francisco.

One traveller on a flight in San Francisco was shocked to look outside their plane window and see an aircraft that appeared to be hovering in the air at a standstill.

The passenger captured a video of the event, which was posted to the social media platform Reddit. People commented asking how such a feat was possible.

“People reacting to this viral video are saying it’s a ‘glitch in the matrix’,” the video poster wrote in the caption.

The clip pans around the aircraft as it is suspended in the air, hanging over a motorway that runs across a large body of water.

As it turns out, the event isn’t magic or a mechanical failure but instead an extremely rare trick of the eyes.

This Plane in San Francisco was filmed by a passenger of another airline appears to have stopped while in time while the air. People reacting to this viral video are saying it’s a ‘glitch in the matrix’ FROM: Dom Lucre | Breaker of Narratives
by u/MartianXAshATwelve in StrangeEarth

“Living near an airport I’ve seen this happen many times in real life,” one person wrote.

Several factors contribute to the “floating plane” effect.

The wide open sky removes visual reference points, which make it easy to see that the plane is, in fact, moving, so instead it seems suspended.

Also, relative motion means the passenger and the plane are moving, but at similar speeds and directions, so the plane seems stationary because it’s not getting closer or further away.

This can be witnessed if you’re travelling alongside a plane, either in another aircraft or in a car near an airport and the observed plane is moving slightly slower.

The phenomenon is rare but allegedly more common in San Francisco, which allows planes to land closer together than usual, if the weather is calm and both aircraft can clearly see each other.

However, some commenters had their own ideas about what was causing the optical illusion, suggesting the plane was still stuck there now, or that it was more likely to be a “glitch in the matrix”.

Many locals said they had seen this many times and it had ceased to seem special or unusual.

“They come in all the time going super-slow like that,” wrote one person, who claimed to live near San Francisco airport. “It looks impossible but it’s not.”

“As someone who lives in 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,” one person commented.

In August, a video of the same phenomenon was posted to Reddit, showing a United Airlines plane “hovering” in mid-air.

Again, it was captured at San Francisco airport.

“Landing at SFO. What is happening here?” the poster wrote in the caption, adding an alien emoji.

One commenter suggested it was a “UFO at SFO” while another said San Francisco airport was “famous” for its dual landings, which produced this effect.