The Bermuda Triangle from FL370 — an honest inventory
because you need to know when you enter the Bermuda Triangle.
Anyone flying from New York to San Juan, or Miami to Bermuda, flies through the Triangle. This isn’t unusual. The Triangle — broadly Miami, San Juan, Bermuda — is one of the most heavily-trafficked patches of water on Earth. Hundreds of flights a day. If the stories were true, ATC chatter would be a continuous chain of mayday calls. It is not.
What actually happens, statistically
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the US Navy have looked at the question more than once. Short version: the accident rate inside the Bermuda Triangle is not higher than comparable water bodies with similar traffic density and weather. The Triangle sits on the hurricane-corridor route from June to November and has poorly-predictable thunderstorm cells, but that is weather, not myth.
The actual origin of the missing-ships-and-planes stories traces to a magazine article from 1964 that gathered a handful of real incidents and interpreted them generously. The story stuck because it feels good. That is how folklore works.
What you actually see from the window
Caribbean blue. More precisely: the turquoise water over the shallow Bahamas banks, which transitions into deep Atlantic indigo as the seafloor drops away. A daytime flight crossing the Triangle shows the transition line from above — an almost-sharp boundary between shallow water over sand and deep water over abyss.
The Gulf Stream runs through the northwest corner of the Triangle and is recognisable from FL370 as a slightly different-coloured ribbon of water. Warmer, different composition, brighter tone. The current is partly why historical incidents in this region are hard to reconstruct: debris drifts kilometres away within hours.
Practical
- Best routes: NYC → San Juan, Miami → St. Thomas, anything from the US mainland to the Caribbean.
- Side of the cabin: outbound from the US mainland, right side. Triangle sits to the southeast.
- Time of day: daylight. The colour contrast between bank and deep ocean only shows in direct sun.
- Skyty: when reverse-geocoding rotates between Atlantic Ocean, Bahamas, and Bermuda, you are in it.
A small honesty
I’ve crossed the Triangle dozens of times — Caribbean routings nearly require it. Nothing supernatural happens. The water is breathtakingly beautiful. The stories are, with respect, nonsense. If you want the beauty, you have it. If you want the myth, look elsewhere.
Coming soon: the matching achievement
Bermuda Triangle Survivor unlocks when you enter the airspace bounded by Miami, San Juan and Bermuda. Tongue firmly in cheek — you will not disappear, you will get an achievement.