[albatross710]

I came up from BNE to SIN yesterday afternoon. On the pilot's announcement he said we would be tracking Emerald, Gulf of Carpentaria, Darwin and then onto SIN. Initially it sounded a long way out of the way. Flight only ended up being 15 minutes late.

I see on the news today there is a Cyclone in Indonesia/Christmas Island area which I assume would account for the different flight path.

Maybe other flights wil be runnning late for the next few days.

Alby

[markis10]

Thats quite a normal flightpath, the headwinds are quite strong in the jetstream at present so in fact you were taking the shortest path by time!

[albatross710]

OK, makes sense.

Interestingly the Flight Path display of the IFE reset itself somewhere over the Gulf. Our final trip time on the IFE was something like 4.5 hours as the display was only showing the track back to The Gulf.

[NM]

BNE-EMD-DRW-SIN is pretty much a straight line.

[markis10]

Straight lines are not the shortest way from a to b on a globe, a great circle route is, where the heading is always changing slightly!

[serfty]

Originally Posted by markis10

Straight lines are not the shortest way from a to b on a globe, a great circle route is, where the heading is always changing slightly!

While this be true, any difference is greatly diminished when straddling the equator as on a route like that.

In this case ~34Miles is the difference.

[ColinP]

Originally Posted by markis10

Straight lines are not the shortest way from a to b on a globe, a great circle route is, where the heading is always changing slightly!

Actually, the shortest distance between a and b on a globe IS a straight line but an aeroplane is not an ideal vehicle for this. A large tunneling machine would be more suitable

[rocket]

Very funny....

[docjames]

Originally Posted by ColinP

Actually, the shortest distance between a and b on a globe IS a straight line but an aeroplane is not an ideal vehicle for this. A large tunneling machine would be more suitable

Aircraft = faster

[Harpoon]

Along the same lines....

HKG -> LHR

On the inflight map I noticed the plane flies almost directly north for an hour then starts it's westward track over russia ....it just seemed quite an odd flight path. Is there a reason for this? A no-fly-zone somewhere in China?