Comments on: Why do airplanes not travel in a straight line?

By: aerostar64@sbcglobal.net

aerostar64@sbcglobal.net — Sat, 28 Feb 2009 14:51:56 +0000

Airlines travel by electronic highways. When travelling great
distances they use a great circle route. Its actually a straight
course when plotted on a globe. When you see the route in
print, you’re seeing a flat representation of a spherical course.
Thats why it appears curved.

By: Thomas W

Thomas W — Sat, 28 Feb 2009 14:28:13 +0000

most of these answers are correct i like the one with flight 1 and flight 2 and the crash this is correct but also planes can not just fly where they want to there are flight routs which MUST be followed!

By: aeronautical

aeronautical — Sat, 28 Feb 2009 10:44:01 +0000

no straight lines/road dividers up there to indicate.

By: hsupilot08

hsupilot08 — Fri, 27 Feb 2009 17:37:29 +0000

I hate people that answer questions that don’t know what the heck they’re talking about. DenimGuy5 is an idiot and shouldn’t be answering aviation questions. To clean up his mess of airplanes running into each other if two airplanes took off from different airports and flew directly at each other they wouldn’t collide. First specific altitudes are to be flown for the direction of flight you are traveling. Basically if you are flying easterly you are to fly at odd thousands and westerly you are to fly at even thousands. For example if my heading is exactly 090 (east), I’m supposed to fly at an odd thousand such as 7,000 feet or FL330 (33,000 feet). This would be for IFR traffic which in addition to that each aircraft would be assigned an altitude to fly at which sometimes doesn’t go along with the rule I just mentioned. If you are flying VFR you are to take the same rule but at 500 feet to the altitude you wish to fly at.

The answer to the question asked has already been answered by most everybody. When we look at a map we see a 2-dimensional representation of a 3-D globe. When you see the flight track of an airplane that is actually flying direct from one airport to another and it looks curved it’s because he’s following the natural curvature of the earth. If you were to warp that map into the shape of the globe it would in fact turn in to what looks like a strait line from A to B.

By: jerry

jerry — Tue, 24 Feb 2009 11:01:03 +0000

it goes by the wind

By: billp_830

billp_830 — Sat, 21 Feb 2009 16:31:51 +0000

On those Airline travel maps you are looking at I am sure the routes going North/South look like straight lines, only the East/West routes appear to curve. The issue is with the map. Your question really gets to the choices map makers have to make, the challenge all maps of the Earth have is that they are trying to represent a sphere (or an ellipsoid, the Earth actually bulges at the equator) on a flat piece of paper. Most maps are Mercator Projections which distort the northern and southern latitudes, with out seeing the travel map you are looking at I would guess that it is a Mercator Projection.

Do this experiment yourself – you’ll need a globe, a World map and a piece of string. On the globe stretch the piece of string between Seattle and Amsterdam, notice the shortest route takes you over Canada and Greenland, north of both your starting and ending point. When you do the same thing on the World map you’ll notice that your string is nearly following the lines latitude across the northern United States and the North Pacific, a much longer route.

You can then exaggerate the difference by looking at Seattle to Moscow. The direct route on the globe will take you over the artic, on the map this doesn’t even look possible.

By: BRAD S

BRAD S — Thu, 19 Feb 2009 15:48:39 +0000

they fly from VOR to VOR

By: Michael B

Michael B — Tue, 17 Feb 2009 17:22:48 +0000

The maps you are looking at are printed that way for clarity, not the actual route. Commercial aircraft travel is conducted using specific routes between ground based navigational aids. These routes are called Victor Airways. At the time when these airways were set up we didn’t have sophisticated electronics or GPS satellite systems. Aircraft traveled from navigation signal to navigation signal. Flight controllers expect aircraft to be on specific routes and specific altitudes to avoid clearance problems (AKA collisions). Aviation industry is slow to change but one day soon we will have commercial aircraft traveling direct from their departure location to their destination saving time and fuel.

By: kbilyak04

kbilyak04 — Tue, 17 Feb 2009 04:05:32 +0000

Nowadays we can often just go GPS direct which is a straight line to where you want to go (if ATC allows it). But before GPS we had to use radio navigation. Things called VORs and NDBs. These are scattered throughout the country. If you wanted to fly from the west coast to the east coast navigating by this method….you would not ever be able to plan a perfectly straight route, you would have to zig-zag a little between navigation facilities.

By: john S

john S — Sun, 15 Feb 2009 05:59:58 +0000

Why do you thing airplanes DON’T travel in a straight line?