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The 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
by k-mcgrady 13y ago
The 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
- scythe 13y agoRegarding great circles and flight routes, a nice feature of Wolfram Alpha is that it will actually display the great-circle route as a straight line, so you can see where it goes: http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=moscow+to+havana http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=moscow+to+havana The projection is a polar projection about the origin, so great circles through Moscow are straight lines.