Iberia will operate a special flight out of Madrid this evening during the total solar eclipse. The Spanish carrier will livestream the eclipse with the help of superfast Starlink WiFi, offering a spectacular viewing point of the astronomical event from 33,000 feet. The one-off flight will depart from Madrid Barajas Airport (MAD) at around 6:45 PM local time, following a route over the province of Palencia, before heading back to Madrid.
Flight IB1473 will be operated by one of Iberia’s Airbus A321XLR narrowbodies, a model known for its exceptional range. The cabin was not made available for public bookings: instead, researchers from the Shelios project will be using the aircraft as an observatory to study the eclipse.
Iberia Flight 1473 Is Ready For The Solar Eclipse
Today will be the first total solar eclipse visible from Spain for over a century, and Iberia has chosen flight code 1473 for a special reason. Specifically, it is the birth year of famed astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus, who introduced the heliocentric model of the solar system, placing the Sun at the center rather than the Earth. The flight will be piloted by Captain Javier Lopera Alcalá and First Officer Javier Meana Fernández, and its routing has been devised to maximize viewing conditions of the total solar eclipse.
Departing Madrid at around 6:45 PM, the European Space Agency has estimated that the total eclipse will reach northern Spain at approximately 8:29 PM. The airline is livestreaming the flight on its social media channels, including via YouTube, which can be viewed above. Along with outward-facing cameras to capture the solar event, viewers can also observe live footage from onboard the aircraft, including a GoPro camera in the cockpit.
Iberia was the launch operator of the A321XLR back in late 2024, completing its first long-haul flight with the type in November with a transatlantic journey from Madrid to Boston Logan International Airport (BOS). The Spanish airline has configured its extra-long narrowbodies with 182 seats across two cabin classes, including 14 lie-flat business seats and 168 in economy.
The airline has now taken delivery of all eight A321XLRs into its fleet, welcoming the final airframe in April 2026. These jets are equipped with SpaceX’s Starlink in-flight connectivity hardware, which can deliver ultra-fast WiFi in the sky. Iberia began offering Starlink to customers earlier this year onboard an Airbus A330 service from Madrid to São Paulo (GRU).
This is part of a much larger rollout across International Airlines Group (IAG) carriers. This includes Aer Lingus, British Airways and Vueling, and it will see over 500 aircraft equipped with Starlink’s hardware.
The Spanish airline has debuted the Madrid-Santo Domingo service, using its single-aisle A321XLR.
Iberia is not the only carrier putting a plane in the air for today’s eclipse. Fellow European carrier Brussels Airlines will also be operating an observation flight in partnership with the University of Antwerp and the Urania Public Observatory. The airline will be using one of its Airbus A320 jets and has capped the passenger load at 100 people. Tickets for these flights are priced at $345 (€299) for a roughly four-hour journey.
A second Belgian-based flight will depart from Liege Airport, with only 30 seats available onboard a smaller Embraer ERJ135 regional jet priced at $1,080 (€799). Some charter airlines are offering special flights too, including the UK’s Air Charter Service, which is operating a service out of London Stansted (STN) priced at $1,215 (£899). NASA will also be launching an aircraft for research purposes, with one of its WB-57 high-altitude planes set to travel at around 50,000 feet.
Many travelers hoping to catch a glimpse of the eclipse have booked flights to airports along the eclipse path. According to Amadeus, flight bookings to these airports have shot up 25% year-on-year between August 7 and 12, while arrivals on August 10 rose by almost 40%.
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