Mitch Sutton has always been into airplanes, but things really took off five years ago when he bought a house in Burien, Wash., with a great view of Seattle-Tacoma International Airport and Mount Rainier.
The house to the northwest of the airport runway provides a unique vantage point, where Sutton can see planes taxiing as well as taking off and landing all day and night.
“I love airplanes, but it’s different when you live under them,” Sutton said, recounting his reservations about buying the house. “But the airport with the mountain behind it? I was just like, ‘I can’t pass up this view.’”
A month into the East Coast native’s move, he didn’t even hear the planes anymore. And now he’s so soothed by flyovers that he leaves a bedroom sliding glass door open so he can hear them at night.
To bring that joy to others in some form, Sutton is running a new project called Rainier Aviation which includes a 24/7 YouTube livestream so that other aviation geeks and plane spotters can marvel at aircraft and the mountain that provides Sea-Tac’s quintessential Northwest backdrop. He pairs the video with real-time flight traffic control audio.
“Being an enthusiast, I do look for plane-spotting channels, and Sea-Tac just didn’t have one,” Sutton said. “It’s something I see every day and appreciate every day, so I just felt like it was time to share that view with everybody else.”
Sutton runs the livestream from equipment mounted on a 10-foot rooftop mast that’s stabilized with guy wires. He uses two pan-tilt-zoom (PTZ) cameras with 600mm zoom, complete with night vision. He’s also a budding aviation still photographer, using a Sony DC-10 Mark IV for close-ups of planes taking off against Rainier, which he shares on his website and Instagram.
In just a few weeks, Sutton’s YouTube channel has attracted a little over 900 subscribers and 23,000 watch hours. The livestream audience peaked on one recent Saturday with about 1,300 people watching at one time.
It has attracted some diehards to a live chat where they comment on types of planes, where they’re headed, the view of the mountain and the weather. Sutton said people treat him like a forecaster, asking him when the sun is coming out.
“I’m learning a lot about lineups and the different runways, which I didn’t know before I started the stream,” he said. “Obviously, I see it every day, but I didn’t know, 16 left, 16 right, 16 center. And if they’re coming in from the south, it’s 34.”
Sutton has a day job as a human resources manager for a non-profit. Launching his livestream has been a heavy lift — waking up at 3:30 in the morning to work on equipment set-up and learn how everything works. He said it’s been a ton of research.
The payoff could be worth it. Other plane-spotting channels on YouTube have attracted sizable audiences, including Airline Videos, a channel that has more than 800,000 subscribers and includes a livestream from LAX. Creator Kevin Ray — and the worldwide fascination around such content — are the subject of a profile this week in The Hollywood Reporter. A 2024 list in Frommers rounded up 15 of the best airplane livestreams.
Isaac Alexander, a chief content officer at Hype Aviation and editor of Jet City Star, said it’s amazing to see the growth of plane-spotting channels, and that they’re a great way to turn non-aviation people into enthusiasts. Along with passenger planes, people can watch cargo jets come and go and get a sense for how much commerce is operating out of the region.
Alexander said there is a decent-sized plane-spotting community in the Seattle area, and multiple Facebook groups devoted to the hobby, with hundreds of members each.
“A great feature with this new livestream is that it’s angled to have Mount Rainier center screen,” Alexander said. “Not many airports globally have a mountain/volcano nearby. Something peaceful about seeing airplanes flying with a large mountain in the background.”
Sutton didn’t grow up in Seattle, but like a lot of transplants he fell in love with the beauty of the place, and the proximity of Mount Rainier. And he appreciates the “Jet City” history with Boeing, the Museum of Flight and more.
“I don’t think any of us see Rainier and aren’t just inspired every time we see it, and feel incredibly lucky to have something like that,” he said. “And I think it’s cool that Seattle really is an aviation city. It’s a great place to have a livestream that really represents that.”
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