Pope’s flight path altered by tardy president

Update: The Atlantic later reported that the event started on time, with the President in attendance. Some have noted the Pope’s plane left early, which might explain the time-killing loops. The original story appears below.

Maybe it’s the aviation geek in me, or my appreciation of promptness, but I thought this bit of news was interesting: If you pull up the flight path of the pope’s plane Tuesday on sites like Flightradar24 or FlightAware, you’ll see it creates a couple of big circles over North Carolina.

(Image via FlightAware)

It seems that President Obama and Vice President Biden were running late, so the word went out for the pope to kill some time, reports the Atlantic via officials on the ground at Andrews Air Force Base.