Just before Puerto Rico’s San Juan Luis Muñoz Marín International Airport shut down Wednesday, Delta Flight 302 took off in the middle of Category 5 Hurricane Irma. The plane and its almost 200 passengers thankfully made it to New York safely, but people on the ground refreshed Twitter nervously as aviation fan Jason Rabinowitz live-tweeted the plane’s dangerous trajectory.
According to FlightRadar24, Flight 302 was the last to leave the airport before it closed. It landed in Puerto Rico less than an hour before leaving again with the intention of evacuating people before the center of the devastating storm hit.
At no point during the 3 1/2-hour flight time were the winds on the course particularly dangerous but conditions were “rapidly degrading” as time went on.
Rabinowitz explained the pilot flew the plane between Irma’s outer band and the core of the hurricane, which “[allowed] the aircraft to navigate in relatively calm air.” It landed in NYC 46 minutes ahead of schedule.
Find everything Rabinowitz live-tweeted here.
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Tess Koman covers breaking (food) news, opinion pieces, and features on larger happenings in the food world. She oversees editorial content on Delish. Her work has appeared on Cosmopolitan.com, Elle.com, and Esquire.com.
