There is a Belgian TV show called "Into the Night" which explores a kind of similar concept, where they have to stay in the night time or else bad things happen so they fly a plane around. I won't spoil it for you, but it's subtitled & available on Netflix.

Snowpiercer is the inverse: People have to stay in sunlight to survive, so they build a nuclear-powered train that runs around the world's equator.

Great show imo

they use a concord once to watch a solar eclipse longer https://duckduckgo.com/?t=ffab&q=concorde+eclipse+flight&atb...

You'd need more than a regular 787, given that the circumference of the earth is 40.000 km so you'd have to fly roughly 1600 km/h or more than mach-1... Then again, that is when flying at the equator. Taking off further north/south would reduce the speed required to stay in sync with the rising or setting sun...

Given that the circumference of the Earth for a given latitude is easily approximate to cos(latitude) * 40000 km you can fly around 60 degrees north or south and be comfortably on the cruising speed of a 787 (~800 km/h).

At 60 degrees the planet is nearly uninhabited for vast stretches. Ok, that would not affect sunsets. But at 66.6 degrees sunsets stop to happen depending on the time of the year. Already St. Petersburg (Russia) at 60 degrees north is famous for their white nights. At 30.000 ft it's worse. So not convinced about spectacular sunsets, I would expect continuous twilight.

I live at 64 degrees and sunsets take "forever" and are mostly boring compared to at more southerly locations.

I'm aware of that, haha, I live nowadays right by the 60N latitude (Stockholm, Sweden) and came from Brazil at around 23S, I've experienced both types of sunsets and I'd say I find the ones at higher latitudes to be much more spectacular than the short ones closer to the equator.

So let's say a trip onboard a 787 around the +-60 latitude during spring/fall equinox is completely doable for chasing the sunset :)

Side question: if you're flying west, take off in the morning, but fly faster than the sun moves across the sky, will you see a sunrise or a sunset in the east?

I once departed Stockholm on Jan 1st, flying to San Francisco. The route goes north, across the polar circle and over Greenland, then south towards the US west coast. As we passed the polar circle, the sun set. A few hours later, we passed it again and the sun rose, only to set again as we approached the evening in US. So I got two sunrises, two days and two sunsets that single day, which I thought was so wonderful I still remember it.

You will see a sunset behind you.

Definitely doable. And with air refuelling capability you don't even need the endurance. Just have the tankers ready for you where you need them.

You'd need a secret Russian nuclear plane for that.