Unlike most passengers, Joe Rao was over the moon when his flight was delayed — which makes sense, since he’s the one who orchestrated the holdup in the first place.

Rao, an associate astronomer at the American Museum of Natural History’s Hayden Planetarium, is also an eclipse chaser who spent months trying to persuade Alaska Airlines to change its takeoff time from Anchorage, Alaska, to Hawaii — so the plane would pass directly through Wednesday’s total solar eclipse.

Rao started his campaign back in 2015 to find a flight that would capture the perfect moment when the moon passes between the Earth and the sun.

He determined the Alaska Airlines flight, whose route was expected to encounter the darkest shadow of the moon as it passed over Earth, was the one.

But there was one problem: It would take off too early.

“I just made a pest of myself. I just kept calling and emailing them,” Rao told ABC News about his efforts to delay the flight by 25 minutes.

The airline finally relented.

“We recognize our customer’s passions,” Chase Craig, Alaska’s director of onboard brand experience, said in a release. “Certainly we can’t change flight plans for every interest, but this was a special moment, so we thought it was worth it.”

Rao, who also works as a TV meteorologist for News 12, and several other eclipse fans booked window seats on the flight.

One of them, Dan McGlaun, even planned to distribute 200 protective glasses to all 181 passengers so they could see the dazzling sight nearly 700 miles north of Honolulu.

The rare celestial event comes when the moon is close enough to Earth to completely block out the sun. The passengers would be able to see the total eclipse for just under two minutes.

Rao said viewing an eclipse from cruising altitude has a major advantage.

“You’re above the clouds,” he said. Otherwise, “if there’s a cloud in front of the sun during totality, you’re not going to see the eclipse. You [also] get a chance to see the moon’s shadow sweeping across the landscape. At 37,000 feet, that’s a dramatic sight to see.”

Rao has pulled off the feat of altering a flight before.

In 1990, he persuaded American Trans Air to delay a departure by 41 minutes so he and other passengers could see an eclipse en route from Honolulu to San Francisco.

“It is an experience,” said Rao, who has seen 10 previous total eclipses. “Every fiber of you gets involved in those few moments when the sun is totally eclipsed.”

With Post wires