As the moon passes between the Earth and the sun on Monday, Andrew Bazos will be traveling at 17,000 feet with rosé in hand, having paid $2,000 to observe the solar eclipse from a private plane’s window.
He will not be alone: private plane company Blade has sold out 14 flights from New York, priced between $1,975 and $3,750, to view the 5-minute cosmic event from above.
With only a few days until the once-in-a-generation total eclipse, people are paying four to five figures for special events.
Bazos and other New Yorkers are traveling far and wide to witness the first total eclipse in the United States since 2017, when the sun vanishes in the “zone of totality” from Mexico’s Pacific coast and travels north-easterly through Texas, Arkansas, Illinois, Missouri, Indiana, Ohio, upstate New York, Vermont, New Hampshire, and Maine before passing through Canada’s maritime provinces.
“This will be my first eclipse. I’m splurging on myself on this one,” Bazos, 61, an orthopedic surgeon and the founder of CrowdRX, which provides medical services at arenas and major venues, told The Post. He spent roughly $2,000 for Blade’s package.
After missing the Northern Lights on a recent trip to Iceland and the last eclipse in 2017, the science fanatic is hoping the stars will align when he views from over Buffalo, New York on Blade’s Pilatus PC-12.
On board when it takes off from Westchester Airport at 1 p.m. on Monday, flying following the moon’s path as it heads northeast when the sun gets fully covered — without having to land — for the three-hour total eclipse experience.
“I am a science nerd. I enjoy astronomy. It’s completely worth it,” Bazos told The Post about reserving the flight, which now has a 300-person backlog of New York residents. “I jumped on the opportunity.”
And he nearly missed it.
“It sold out within 15 minutes of sending the email.” We couldn’t add flights fast enough,” Roisin Branch, Blade’s chief marketing officer, told The Post about the Solar Eclipse package, which launched with 14 flights carrying 112 people.
Others are carefully selecting their sites.
Daphne Schlick, 52, a legal services employee, and her husband, Josh Winterfield, 43, a science teacher, had been preparing a vacation to Kingston, Ontario, Canada, to witness the once-in-a-lifetime eclipse.
In case the weather does not cooperate, they have paid hundreds of dollars in deposits at motels in Youngstown, Ohio, and Auburn, New York.
“We have a telescope, our glasses, and a filter for the camera,” Schlick told The Post, after spending $100 on a special filter for their Cannon camera and dusting off their telescope after their previous partial eclipse viewing in Battery Park in 2017.
“We’ve booked other hotels in different cities next to the zone of totality just in case Kingston is cloudy,” Schlick said, adding that she and her husband, who live on Manhattan’s Upper West Side, are using vacation days for the family trip.
“This is the only time we’ll be able to see it with our kid – we won’t be alive whenever the next one is going to be.”
Menny Woolstone, 43, who lives in Tribeca and works in financial technology, is spending around $5,000 to travel from downtown Manhattan to Weston, Vermont, for a solo spa vacation at the five-star boutique hotel, The Weston, for the cosmic event, which he plans to document with photos to share with his son.
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