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.
I'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?
I 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.
No, you are wrong. All of those flights, and all flights on the Moscow-Havana route, follow the great circle route because it is the shortest distance. Flights that must divert for winds or turbulence or scheduling follow a modified great circle route.
Today's Aeroflot 150 does not follow a great circle route, modified or otherwise. Such a deviation has nothing to do with weather or other environmental factors and can only be explained by a need to avoid a particular airspace and the potential for diversion to an alternate airport within that airspace in case of an emergency.
You will notice that the route overflies the Azores, Bermuda and Nassau so that those airports, rather than airports in continental North America, can be used as alternates when filing the flight plan.
This is the most telling aspect of the diversion, even more so than the diversion from the great circle.
Someone important who needs to avoid the airspace over North America at all costs is on that plane.
What you see is a substantial deviation from one to the other. One flies over land in the US quite a bit, the other only very briefly.
If headwinds are bad enough on the great circle route it could actually be more efficient to take a non-great-circle route. Airplanes fly relative to the air, not the ground. So if the air is moving fast enough in the wrong direction it can lengthen the route substantially. The jetstream can be more than 100mph. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jet_stream
EDIT: It's also not terribly wise to state something as fact (that I am wrong) when neither of us will know either way until the media reports on it. We can both speculate, but unless we know the pilots on the airplane and they confided in us prior to the flight, we can't know. I don't know the pilots and I suspect that you don't either. So let's not dress up guesswork as facts.
Both of the examples you gave are great circle routes. Today's Af150 route is not, in any way, a modified great circle route.
One correction: upon looking again at FlightAware, it is clear that the flight specifically avoided controlled airspace around the Azores, probably because Portugal has strenuously declined to allow overflights that may have certain passengers aboard.
Edit: I mean you are wrong about "happens to miss", that's all. Planning air routes is not a matter of happenstance, and all of the examples you have given run counter to your argument, because they prove that Moscow-Havana flights invariably follow a great circle or a modified great circle route. If you can show me any previous AF150 that follows a flight path that resembles today's flight path, I will concede the point.
Yes. It is extremely interesting that both of those flights started out on a more northerly route over Scandinavia and overflew Great Britain.
Today's flight started out on a much mores southerly route, overflying Belrus, Poland, the Czech Republic, Germany, Luxembourg, Belgium and France, but avoiding Spain, Portugal and the Azores.
Thank-you for the information. I am probably wrong. We'll see.
Okay, 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.
My 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.
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).
The 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.
Regarding 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:
Imagine 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.
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.