Passengers aboard Alaska Airlines flight 401 were treated to a special view Tuesday while their pilot waited to land the plane at Sea-Tac Airport.
The plane, which departed from McCarran International Airport, was flying in a holding pattern south of Olympia when the pilot veered off and took a pass around Mount Rainier.
Passenger Tom Davis says the plane was about 3,000 feet above Rainier's peak.
Because of the rare opportunity, people began handing their phones to passengers with window seats. As Davis described on Reddit, everyone started "conveyor-belting" their phones. The woman sitting in the window seat in Davis' row got photos for several people.
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"I don't think I'll ever see the mountain from that vantage point again," Davis wrote on Reddit. "It was beautiful."
People traveling into and out of Sea-Tac Airport experienced significant delays Tuesday. A think layer of fog blanketed the Puget Sound region, leading to a three-hour ground stop. That led to cascading delays.
Planes were moving again by late morning.
