Close Encounter of the First Kind

Boeing 747 pilot Christiaan van Heijst has captured this amazing Close Encounter of the first kind over the Turkish coast. Christiaan explains: "A thick uniform layer of stratus clouds is acting like a blanket over the northern Turkish coast, hiding the bright Moon from the face of the Earth. But above the clouds, the highways of the air are in full motion around the clock. Nearly all the traffic from Europe to and from the Middle- and Far East is passing along a narrow corridor over the Turkish Black Sea coast. "To prevent airplanes flying head-on in such a crowded passage, a clever system is incorporated worldwide; all airplanes flying in an easterly direction are flying uneven altitudes (31.000ft, 33.000ft, etc) and traffic flying in a westerly direction fly the even levels (30.000ft, 32.000ft, etc) so that there is always at least 1000 ft separation between opposite traffic. SEE Christiaan's starry starry night

"In this case, there were two airplanes coming towards us at the same time, 1000ft below and above. Sandwiched in between, the exposure time of 6 seconds drew their navigation lights as long colorful streamers. As a gesture of goodbye, the pilot above switched the landing lights on, adding two more yellow trails before it disappeared from sight. Literally, like ships passing in the night. "And to add some depth to the shot, the Moon was quite accommodating to create long Moonlight shadows of their contrails in the clouds below." Christiaan is one of the world’s leading aviation photographers and more of his work and more close encounter (s) can be found here. You can follow Christiaan on Instagram here: @jpcvanheijst