> But now that I think about it... I've only ever seen those maps draw the route as the great-circle path from the departure airport to the destination airport.

> But now that I think about it... I've only ever seen those maps draw the route as the great-circle path from the departure airport to the destination airport. So they're fictional in that regard -- whether they're interpolating the position on the great-circle path as a percentage of the actual track distance flown and remaining from the real navigation data, or doing something even more fictional, I don't know. Very interesting. Thanks for the detailed answer. Next time I'll make sure to record the position information independently as well. For some reason I had just taken their great-circle path at its face value and never questioned it. In hindsight, it was all too perfect. :)