A small plane took off from Bentonville Municipal Airport Friday morning and spent the morning drawing one of the most famous faces in art history across the sky. By around 11:30 a.m., the pilot had completed a flight path tracing the outline of the Mona Lisa along the Oklahoma-Arkansas line, according to News 9.
The aircraft behind the aerial sketch was a Cessna R182 Skylane RG registered as N1810R, per Aircraft.com. Flight-tracking logs captured the journey.
The plane's route wound over eastern Oklahoma and northwest Arkansas, according to AirNavRadar.
The Flight's Starting Point
The flight began at Bentonville Municipal Airport.
On Friday, the Cessna carrying tail number N1810R was followed in real time as the Mona Lisa silhouette emerged on flight-tracking maps, per AirNavRadar.
How Sky Art Actually Gets Made
Flying a recognizable image into a flight path can produce sky art visible on tracking software.
The Bentonville flight used a route to trace an image. In August 2017, Boeing test pilots flew an 18-hour route across 22 states in a 787-8 Dreamliner to trace the outline of the aircraft itself, according to NPR.
The pilot and motivation behind Friday's route add a mystery to the Mona Lisa flight. For now, the flight's trail of coordinates offers a record of the route over the Oklahoma-Arkansas line.
