With a little help from Google Earth, Google Maps, and Photoshop, I approximated our flight path using the old "shortest distance between two points" logic (I'm assuming that's the logic our American Airlines pilot will be using too), and here's what I came up with:
Looks weird at first because it seems like we'll be traveling in a big arc (the red line), but that's only what the pesky flat map projection wants us to believe. In reality, when we take a look at the same flight path on a spherical globe (or, in this case, in Google Earth), we can see that the path is actually a nice straight line:
So, there you have it. Basically, we'll be heading northwest out of O'Hare, bisecting Canada, continuing over Alaska, maybe even going over a bit of Russia, and finally landing in Japan, barely having gone over the Pacific Ocean at all. Pretty interesting, huh?
Monday, February 25, 2008
Flight Path
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3 comments:
wow, this is pretty cool, especially looking at it from this angle, mom
Grandma and I "really" enjoyed reading all you have prepared for your trip - sounds fantastic. You both sound really excited about your adventure. Have fun!!!
Grandma and Aunt Leslie
actually you will be flying an arc. you'll start out on a northwest heading and end on a southwest heading. good ol' curvature of the earth makes it shorter to fly an arc than straight line... just a little pilot insight about great circle routes! have an excellent time; i'm very jealous!
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