A few merry wiggles of the control column of an Airbus A380 and voila!—a Christmas tree visible on radar, replete with decorations.
The airplane, with call number AIB232E, was manned by a test flight crew out of Hamburg, Germany, CNN reported. The pilots took this festive flight on Wednesday, Dec. 13, with a number of flight path radar sites publishing the resulting image.
Flightradar24 posted this animated version on its Twitter feed.
The airplane was on a test flight ahead of delivery to the Emirates airline, the national carrier of United Arab Emirates, according to the Independent.
It is reported the plane sketched the masterpiece in thin air, cruising at an average altitude of 41,000 feet.
One commenter on Twitter suggested the Airbus flight crew meant to sketch out a different message—with a nudge and a wink, of course.
Another Twitter user posted this image, calling it a confused attempt to copy the Airbus Christmas tree.
While certainly attention-grabbing, the Hamburg team’s creative effort is not the first flightpath Christmas tree.
On Dec. 11, a pilot behind the controls of an Amateur Vans RV-9 airplane, call number G-RVDG, produced a similarly delightful work in the skies near Northampton, England, published on the blog Flightradar24.
On Dec. 18, a Robinson R44II helicopter attempted a copy.
And finally, there’s A Brief History of Drawing Christmas Trees with Airplanes, published on the Flightradar24 blog.
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