The solar eclipse is something that has been and will be in the news all day as millions of people stretch across the United States to catch this eclipse in totality. Thanks to the 79 mile swath of land that this totality will cover, some small towns and cities are seeing more visitors in a day than they experience in an entire year!
One Little Airport Sees HUGE Traffic for the Solar Eclipse!
And this goes for airports as well! In Casper, Wyoming, a typical day at this tiny airport will see just a few airplanes landing. But, between the hours of 5am and 11am this morning, they had a reported 167 planes land! That is about 1 aircraft landing every 2 minutes!
Casper Airport from Google Maps
This huge influx of aircraft had the airport researching how to best handle this type of situation. They studied other small airports that see traffic spikes at certain times (like Augusta, GA) and setup a reservation system to accommodate all the aircraft that would be landing today. In fact, they had technically closed the airport – to all but the aircraft that had made reservations.
According to reports, the CBP agent onsite confirmed that they had received requests from people in 19 countries about arriving in the US there! Another report said that the largest aircraft landing in Casper, a Boeing 737, supposedly had a Saudi prince onboard.
Unfortunately for the rest of the town of Casper, most of these visitors (1,000 in total) are simply winging in to catch the eclipse and then heading out – they won’t even be leaving the airport. Still, this is an exciting thing for the town of Casper as many of its residents headed to the airport to watch all these private planes coming in.
Featured image courtesy of Shutterstock
