How To See The Northern Lights While Flying to Iceland

While we knew it would be a little chillier vacationing in Iceland in the autumn, this seasonal selection came with the possibility that we might see the Northern Lights.  It also comes with less crowds, and autumn has fast become my favorite season for traveling. Obviously, there is no guarantee that you'll see the aurora borealis regardless of when you travel. You'll need crisp, clear weather and minimal light pollution.

To cut to the chase, we did NOT see the Northern Lights while we traveled around Iceland. We used an Aurora Forecast app to check in everyday, but the conditions weren't ideal and the night sky remained overcast much of the time.

HOWEVER, we DID see the Northern Lights while we were on the way to Iceland.

As we were tying up loose ends for our trip, we thought to double-check our seats on the plane to see if we should make any adjustments to our assignment. We've tried to get in the habit of checking SeatGuru to verify our selection and make sure we're comfortable with the layout.

We decided to move some things around based on other seats that were still vacant...while we were at it, I had a random thought. Was there possibly an optimal spot on the plane to chance seeing the northern lights while we flew overnight? We found a couple of forums with some general advice. Since we were coming from the west (Chicago), we chose seats that were on the left hand side of the plane.

Honestly, I didn't have high hopes of spotting anything. Our ~6-hour flight left O'Hare at 7:30 PM (Central time), and we would be arriving in Iceland for a ~1-hour layover at 6:35 AM, so I was planning to get as much forced shut-eye as I possibly could to avoid arriving in Europe completely exhausted.

Three hours after I took the above picture, Francisco nudged me awake (although I'm not sure what you would call what I was doing sleeping) and excitedly asked "Is that the Northern lights?" We started snapping pics with varying success. It was a little dark to pick up much on video, but our camera was picking up a fair amount of the green in the sky in pictures. Apparently, it's not uncommon for your camera to pick up more of the green than you actually see in person, and I found that to be true overall. In person, it kind of looked like backlit fog.

We poked our seat neighbor to alert him to the lightshow outside of our window. He told his companions across the aisle, and several other people around us started checking it out.

Obviously, I'm beyond thrilled that we switched up our seat assignments at the last minute.  This turned out to be our ONLY opportunity to see the Northern Lights for this entire trip. Even before we'd arrived in Iceland, I'd checked this item off our list and I could rest easy and not feel pressured to wake up at 1:00 AM every night we were there to try to get a glimpse. Someday, maybe I'll have an opportunity to see a full light show, but for now, I'm satisfied.

Check out the vlog below from Day 0 of our travels. It ends with what footage we could get of the Northern Lights from the airplane.