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I'm confused. People are saying this is due to earths curvature, but this is in the northern hemisphere so shorter paths should be more northern, not more southern.
See this map of the actual shortest distance line (purple) for those two points. The image OP's question seems much more reasonable given this information?
It’s the way ATC routing works. In this case they might route SFO - IAH traffic over the southern route because it doesn’t interfere with westbound traffic heading to PHX or SFO, and this might be over southern airways. Go IAH - SFO and the route might be northern over LAS as route you plotted shows to mesh with the larger traffic flow going E to W. Who knows. But ATC routing often doesn’t follow a straight line, there’s lots of factors that send aircraft over less efficient routes.
It’s still not a great question in the context OP posted it because, as others have mentioned, the question is phrased as an accusation (JAQ-ing off) that makes no attempt to understand the airspace system and is probably asked in bad faith by Petersen.
My heard-from-online understanding is that this is a combination of multiple factors:
- planes tend to route over major airports so that there's always an emergency landing site nearby
I think you've got it right. This flight path is basically:
SFO > LAX > PHX > ELP > AUS > IAH
The post is indeed not a great circle.
Redraw the path nearest to the red line but avoid the areas marked in green and you have your answer. Arizona is at a pretty high elevation and the rockies stretch from new mexico through colorado onwards, so they probably fly around the other way under the Rockies.
Edit: i think his question is still disingenuous
I remember when I was in college in the early 2000's, one of my close friends found work under the table writing original research papers for students at more prestigious universities. That way, the rich kids could plagiarize a paper but since it was wholly original and had never been seen anywhere else, they couldn't get caught for plagiarism. It helped my friend out a lot when he was in a tight spot trying to get his Masters degree, but... I've thought about it a lot over the years and the long-term impacts.
I think this is one of the long-term impacts. People who have credentials, but credentials essentially mean nothing because a lot of the "work" they did to get those credentials was paid-for or faked. This has lead to a world where the people "running the show" as it were are deeply uneducated while the people doing the actual labor and thought who are often getting underpaid are wildly more educated than the people they have to suffer under working for.
The wealthy have become so privileged that they don't even need to know the details of how anything actually works and now they are going to make all of us suffer because they don't believe the evidence that would have been presented to them at some point if they had actually gotten a real education.
This is precisely why I'm terrified of the generation that's going through college with chatgpt right now. These people will be doctors and nurses.
Thanks, that's a scary af thought 🥶
This has always been the case though. The wealthy have rarely known more than how to get and maintain wealth, which isn't that hard when you're statistically born into it.
Pretty sure paying for someone to do your homework is a thing in India for the wealthy. There are also lots of rich students, who were failed by teachers in tests, give a not so subtle threatening question "do you know who my father is?" As a result, plenty of people attain higher job positions without the actual merit.
It's a thing everywhere. Donald Trump has a degree and he sure as fuck doesn't know anything about anything.
Out of curiosity, why *is* it not flying in a straight line? Curvature of the Earth or something?
There are mountains and multiple no-fly zones along the direct path. They're avoiding those.
While there is obviously a lot of military restricted airspace around Nellis, China Lake, and Irwin, the planned route takes the flight 100s of miles further south than necessary.
They are following charted airway routes designated by the FAA. These routes exist to help manage air traffic, ensure accurate navigation, and avoid collisions. Few if any direct routes exist between airports.
Pretty sure planes usually don't fly perfectly straight lines A to B for the entire flight. There are often things to avoid, you might go from waypoint A to B to C to D with a straightish line between each. But you would want to avoid areas for various reasons. Go around high traffic areas you don't need to be in, dangerous weather or just avoiding turbulence within reason, make sure you are dropping the chemtrails over populated areas.
Last flight I was on did a big ass loop. Kinda wanted to ask the pilot why he did that, but it was a longer than expected flight and I just wanted to go home. The weather was shit, so I'm guessing the airport was temporarily closed because of that. Probably the pilot knew the weather situation and took on extra fuel so he could just fly around for a while if the airport was temporarily closed.
So yeah, there's a lot of little details that would make sense if you're on the plane, but looks really weird if the only thing you're looking at is a flight path.