QF51 yesterday

[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]

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]

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]

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?

 

[Evan]

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?

There may be but i think you will find this is the winter flight path, it is better to avoid some really bad head winds !
I had a PVG-LHR flight that had 200+ head winds the whole trip, at one point the pilot flew north and even slightly east to get north as quick as possible where the winds were better, and if they considered that better i have no idea what it would have been the more direct way.

E