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Moscow-Cuba flight skirts US airspace, prompts speculation Snowden is aboard
- Titanous 13y agoThe flight does appear to be completely avoiding the US. Previous flight on this route: http://flightaware.com/live/flight/AFL150/history/20130708/1400Z/UUEE/MUHA http://flightaware.com/live/flight/AFL150/history/20130708/1... Current flight: http://flightaware.com/live/flight/AFL150/history/20130711/1005Z/UUEE/MUHA http://flightaware.com/live/flight/AFL150/history/20130711/1...
- tinbad 13y agoMaybe they're taking a shortcut to save kerosine? :) Interesting to see though, as I would expect for flights to Cuba always to avoid US airspace.
- Fuzzwah 13y agoGreat circles are the shortest route. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Circle http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Circle
- jlgreco 13y agoI'm sensing a great circle joke with s/kerosene/kerosine/
- foobarbazqux 13y agoPlease don't drag the conversation off onto a tangent.
- foobarbazqux 13y agoOk, so admittedly that was a lesser circle joke.
- anonymoushn 13y agoThe route that goes over the U.S. is shorter.
- untog 13y agoBy 18 minutes. It's hardly a huge diversion.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- semiel 13y agoI know you're kidding, but for the edification of anyone wondering why the normal route looks longer than the current route: Lines on maps are not accurate representations of the shortest distance between the points, because maps are 2d representations of a 3d globe. The shortest path is approximately along a "great circle"[1], which looks like the path in the first link. [1]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_circle http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_circle
- fdej 13y agoThe normal route is shorter. The map projection is misleading.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- lettergram 13y agoIt also seems to be avoiding some of the weather that past through the south-eastern states.
- swamp40 13y agoIt is absolutely amazing that we have this information (and the ability to graph it) at our fingertips.
- msandford 13y agoYeah but look at these flights: http://flightaware.com/live/flight/AFL150/history/20130707/2108Z/UUEE/MUHA http://flightaware.com/live/flight/AFL150/history/20130707/2... http://flightaware.com/live/flight/AFL150/history/20130702/2100Z/UUEE/MUHA http://flightaware.com/live/flight/AFL150/history/20130702/2... http://flightaware.com/live/flight/AFL150/history/20130701/2123Z/UUEE/MUHA http://flightaware.com/live/flight/AFL150/history/20130701/2... All of those nearly miss US airspace. This flight just happens to miss it a bit more.
- ErikAugust 13y agoBetween this and the crash at SFO - be interested to see how much Flightaware's traffic has spiked.
- DavidChouinard 13y agoDavid from FlightAware here. The last few days have indeed been very hectic on the ops side.
- smkelly 13y agoThis data is public at Quantcast: https://www.quantcast.com/flightaware.com https://www.quantcast.com/flightaware.com
- pauldino 13y agoThose don't look like real flight paths. In fact if you click on the track log they all say "Estimated" at all their points.
- msandford 13y agoOkay, but the other flight paths that are more "normal" are also estimated. And nobody seems to be questioning them. I'm not saying Snowden is or is not on the flight. Just that getting all excited about a route deviation might be a bit premature given that there isn't a hard rule about where you're supposed to fly.
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- k-mcgrady 13y agoThe article mentions weather but can anyone explain in more detail why flights don't always take this (bypassing USA) route? It seems much more direct. My only guess is safety (nowhere to make an emergency landing for most of this shorter route).
- glesica 13y agoThe world is a sphere, the projections shown in the article don't reflect that. Russia is near the "top" of the world, so flying north is the quickest way to go south, on the opposite "side" of the planet.
- k-mcgrady 13y agoGood point, I never thought about that.
- untog 13y agoImagine that map on a sphere. The higher you go, the shorter the distance. If you flew directly over the North Pole you'd jump from one half of the map directly to the other.
- wf 13y agoThe path over the US is the shortest path. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great-circle_navigation http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great-circle_navigation
- Zhenya 13y agoThe route usually taken is closer to: Great Circle Distance http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great-circle_distance http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great-circle_distance
- mapmeld 13y agoFlat maps distort global distances. If you draw a direct line on a globe or Google Earth, you'll see why they take this path. Google Earth screenshot: http://i.imgur.com/WyIxmC5.png http://i.imgur.com/WyIxmC5.png
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- Zhenya 13y agoWould love to watch the Soviet err I mean Russian reaction if the US tried to force the plane down in ATL or MIA.
- ChuckMcM 13y agoMy guess is that it isn't anything special. It flew over France after all and France denied the Bolivian Presidential plane access to French airspace on suspicion that Snowden was aboard.
- dpapathanasiou 13y agoIt turns out the change in path was because of the weather in the North Atlantic today: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/worldviews/wp/2013/07/11/turns-out-that-aeroflot-flight-to-havana-is-diverting-because-of-turbulence-over-greenland/ http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/worldviews/wp/2013/07/11... Though if it hasn't landed yet, who knows, maybe he is on board.
- _k 13y agoHere's a Washington Post update : unusual turbulence over Greenland. :http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/worldviews/wp/2013/07/11/snowden-watch-todays-moscow-havana-flight-taking-a-very-odd-detour-that-avoids-the-u-s/ http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/worldviews/wp/2013/07/11...
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- smackfu 13y agoHere's the great circle route on a map: http://www.gcmap.com/mapui?P=svo-hav http://www.gcmap.com/mapui?P=svo-hav
- smkelly 13y agoWe sent the following to the media this morning: Hello from FlightAware.com, We are receiving a large volume of calls about Aeroflot 150, en route from Moscow to Havana asking if the Southern routing across the Atlantic Ocean is typical and asking if this routing avoids US airspace. Because of winds (which blow East), the flight generally takes a more Northern route, up over Iceland, through Canada, and down the Eastern seaboard. However, on days when the winds are light or unusual, it can be more favorable to take a more Southern route which also avoids the additional overflight fees from Canada and the US. The route being flown today is comparable distance to the Northern/Canada route, although it appears significantly more direct due to flat projections of a curved Earth. The flight duration today is about the same as the last couple weeks, which suggest they're taking this routing due to winds/overflight fees. The last two times we saw this flight take a similar route were June 20 and June 8. On the route it's flying today, it will fly in US airspace; the US controls most of the Western half of the North Atlantic. To actually avoid US airspace, a flight from Moscow to Havana would likely have to fly South to (approximately) Western Sahara and then West, which would be about 30% further than either of the routings discussed above.
- TillE 13y ago> the US controls most of the Western half of the North Atlantic By "controls" I assume that means air traffic control, rather than any kind of legal jurisdiction.
- smkelly 13y agoYes.
- dexcs 13y agothanks for this info! Much more detailed than the newspapers...
- lvs 13y agoI'm confused about the distinction between air traffic controlled airspace and sovereign airspace. It seems that international law would only allow sovereignty over airspace within 12 nautical miles of the coastline. Can you comment?
- pcvarmint 13y agohttp://cryptome.org/ http://cryptome.org/
- pcvarmint 13y agoNotice that the Cryptome URLs say "manning-flight" instead of "snowden-flight". Freudian slip?