Flight-Seeing Southern Lights

Now this is a spectacular flight.

Truth: We’ve heard some meh reviews of trips to see the Northern Lights (most notably in New Yorker contributor Lauren Collins’s memoir, When in French; most persistently in a million unenthusiastic TripAdvisor reviews). Too much cold, too little pizazz. So if we’re going to do the aurora, we’re thinking: do it once, do it right. And nothing looks more right than this chartered flight in New Zealand, an eight-hour tour offering a once-in-a-lifetime vantage on the aurora australis.

Huge congrats to @iangriffin & crew for making #flighttothelights a reality. @FlyAirNZ is this the most impressive wing shot ever? #Nextyear pic.twitter.com/ZZQdrBn0t8

— Dave Swift (@DSwiftnz) March 23, 2017

Tickets were not cheap: NZ$4,000 works out to about $2,800, which works out to about $6 a minute. But given the results, we’re thinking that’s a pretty reasonable price.

This is the photo Stephen Voss was hoping to get from his seat on the @FlyAirNZ #FlightToTheLights. We can say Stephen NAILED IT! #Aurora pic.twitter.com/TKGEcc4V5I

— Paul Le Comte (@five15design) March 23, 2017

Who wants to arrange the next charter flight?

Meet your guide

Diane Rommel

Diane Rommel has written for The Wall Street Journal, Outside, Marie Claire, Cosmopolitan, Travel + Leisure, Wallpaper and Afar, as well as The Cut, Buzzfeed, Huffington Post and McSweeney’s. She once drove from London to Mongolia, via Siberia.