Question about flying to New Zealand

[blume357]

I have some friends who are flying to New Zealand this weekend and was discussing this with my wife.... seems like it is 105 in the town they are headed to. But that is not my question.

I'm a closet navigator... love charts and stuff... when I fly I always get a window seat and take a GPS along with me to be able to identify what is below me when you can see it as well as knowing where I am... What I've noticed is that usually a flight does not take a direct path to your destination... often takes a path that goes near airports.... my wife and I flew from Charlotte N.C. to Belize last year and the route was over to Georgia and then down along the west coast of Florida, across the keys and to Cuba...about 12miles north of Cuba we took a 'right' and went directly over to Cancun and then followed the Mexican Coast down to Belize....

So I was thinking about my friends heading out, I was wondering what kind of route they would take to New Zealand... then I realized something... it is a 17 hour flight.... so in looking this up... not taking into account the curvature of the earth and all those other things... the approximate true north direction from Dallas to New Zealand is 310 degrees... but here is the crux.... 17hours later the island is going to be on the 'other side of the earth..... So how does the pilot get there in the fasted time? Would he or she fly toward where it is going to be.... as in toward Africa and the indian ocean.. or would they just head 310 degrees and then fly further west (5,000miles?) to where it will be 17 hours later. Point being if they slowed down and timed the flight out to exactly 24 hours then New Zealand would be where you headed for in the first place if you did the 310.

 

[bogus bill]

Maybe some airline pilots themselves might have a hard time answering that. They set up computers that figure it out. I worked at Lockheed. I recall the pilots talking about testing a L 10-11 that they had flown to England and it flew itself from takeoff and landed itself, and that was over fourty years ago! Kind of like a cartoon I seen. Two pilots are sitting in a airliner with a maze of instruments. One is commenting to the other, You know, at one time I could actually tell you what they all did!

 

[pisgah]

The routes they use are nearly -- but not quite -- great circle routes. The entire globe is marked off in to flight routes and waypoints. A waypoint may be a landmark, a navigational beacon, or just a set of coordinates. The route is laid out waypoint-to-waypoint to approximate, as closely as possible, the great circle route between the departure point and the destination. That's about the best explanation I can give.

Of course, this is true only for IFR flights, which all jet airliner flights are. Most of the world (below 17,500 feet altitude) is VFR territory, and in VFR you can fly pretty much any route you choose except through controlled airspace around airports that have towers and restricted airspace like that over many military installations and military testing areas.

It's more complicated than that, but that's enough to give the gist.

 

[blume357]

I'm familiar with the method of navigating via the great circle ... but only at going about 5-9 knots over water.... it seems that when you are in the air the earth would be moving either with you or away from you.... this kind of is starting to mess with my brain because the damn planet is spinning at just about 1,000 miles and hour... so if you went up lets say in a ballon... why would you not stay stationary and the planet move under you at that speed? As I typed that the fog kind of lifted and I realized that the lower atmosphere is moving at the same relative speed as the planet.... So does this mean that New Zealand really stays in the relative same place as you fly toward it at around 600mph for 17hrs?
For those that don't understand the great circle thing.. the problem is that maps are drawn on flat paper and if you are looking at thousands of miles the actual shortest distance on the map is not a straight line but an ark.

 

[pisgah]

..the actual shortest distance on the map is not a straight line but an ark.

Well, actually an ark is what Noah built. The shortest distance on a flat map is an arc. :wink:

Seriously, though, blume, I've now exhausted my meager fount of knowledge of the subject (more like a dribble), and now you'll have me losing sleep over it. :lol:

Maybe we'll get lucky and someone who actually knows what he's talking about will chime in...

 

[coach]

You might ask Patrick Smith at askthepilot.com. An airline pilot that flies the world.
I have enough trouble finding bouys on the Chesapeake Bay.

 

[Kevin]

That is a great point, about New Zeland staying in the same spot. If the flight is 17 hours, the earth under the plane has definitely rotated. Much more so than a simple flight from DFW To Atlanta for example.

I've flown to Sydney Australia twice. Each time the pilot found the Sydney airport. I suppose the GPS in the plane accounts for the rotation and adjusts accordingly. Our route was from DFW to SFO and then 14 hours to Sydney. It was midnight Saturday when the plane took off and we landed around 6am Monday. I think that was the trip. We are hoping to go back this summer. I'll pay closer attention.

 

[AJGUNNER]

No idea on answering your question but I can tell you that flight times to and from can actually vary greatly---like 2 hours depending on what the jet stream is doing. I went to Auckland via LA and if I remember right it was just over 14 going and closer to 17 returning. I had to run after clearing customs to catch my connection home.

 

[GunnyGene]

I've flown from the west coast to the far east a few times. Last time before I retired it was in the cargo bay of a C-130. Island hopping all the way. Counting stops in HI, Wake & Guam it was nearly 2 weeks to get from El Toro to Iwakuni. Enjoyed the stops tho.

 

[Don Lovel]

I watched a reality show about NZ customs officers. There was a flight from Chile' that was rerouted to Christchurch due to a bad storm keeping it from landing in Sydney. The flight crew passed out fresh Chilean fruit to the passengers which the NZ Customs fined them $300 each for having in their carryon bags

 

[pete44ru]

.

BREAKING NEWS: The rotation/movement of the Earth is not relevant to flight paths unless the flight path occurs outside the Earth's atmosphere, since the aircraft, & the air it flies through, rotate with the Earth.

FWIW, Intercontinental air travel has long been over great circle routes, ever since aircraft that have long range capabilities were developed.

AFAIK, aircraft w/o long range capabilities, coast hug and/or island hop, just like 100 years ago.

.

 

[Dave P.]

.

BREAKING NEWS: The rotation/movement of the Earth is not relevant to flight paths unless the flight path occurs outside the Earth's atmosphere, since the aircraft, & the air it flies through, rotate with the Earth.

FWIW, Intercontinental air travel has been over great circle routes ever since aircraft that have long range capabilities were developed.

AFAIK, aircraft w/o long range capabilities, coast hug and/or island hop, just like 100 years ago.

.

Ding Ding Ding......we have a winner! If this were not so, our average winds at the
equator would be about 1000 miles per hour.
Dave

 

[Colonialgirl]

I've flown from the west coast to the far east a few times. Last time before I retired it was in the cargo bay of a C-130. Island hopping all the way. Counting stops in HI, Wake & Guam it was nearly 2 weeks to get from El Toro to Iwakuni. Enjoyed the stops tho.

MOST confusing Flight:
Left Tachikawa, Japan at 21:00 TUESDAY NIGHT, Landed on Wake Island at 02:00 Wednesday morning, left there at approximately 03:00 and finally landed in Honolulu, Hawaii at 10:00 AM TUESDAY Morning. Didn't know what I was suppose to be doing; Breakfast?, Lunch, Dinner?, BED TIME????

 

[Montelores]

Over oceanic airspace, there are typically organized "tracks" between the busiest airports / landmasses. These are "airways" in the sky, plotted over fixed points in space (waypoints).

These routes are released each day by the ATC authorities responsible for management of them and disseminated in advance for the use of airlines, military, and private operators. Over the North Atlantic (very busy airspace between North America and Europe), these routes (NATS - N.A. Track System) are optimized for winds / turbulence. Not sure about the PACOTS (Pacific Organized Track System), however.

The aircraft use GPS / inertial navigation / Flight Management Systems (FMS) systems to fly these routes, and their speed / altitude / routing is assigned prior to entry into oceanic airspace. The altitudes / speeds / ETA's for succeeding waypoints are reported over each waypoint to the Oceanic ATC Control Centers to maintain aircraft separation over the ocean, because civilian radar facilities cannot reach those distances. ATC maintains positive aircraft separation based on these reports.

(Over the continental U.S., for example, aircraft are "visible" to ATC by radar at the ARTCC's - Air Route Traffic Control Centers - so positive aircraft separation can be maintained. And as an aside, civilian radar actually monitors the "radio" signal from aircraft's "transponder" - a type of radio - not the actual radar reflection off the skin of the aircraft.)

If you're interested, here are some relevant websites for more information:

The first page shows the waypoints (latitude / longitude and named 5-letter waypoints) for an Air New Zealand flight from Auckland (AKL) to Los Angeles (LAX).

https://flightaware.com/live/flight/ANZ2

This page is an FAA guide for dispatchers (licensed professionals who plan flights for airlines and flight departments).

https://www.faa.gov/about/office_org/headquarters_offices/ato/service_units/air_traffic_services/artcc/anchorage/media/TA_Users_Guide.pdf

Here are the Pacific tracks for Jan. 11:

https://pilotweb.nas.faa.gov/PilotWeb/noticesAction.do?queryType=PACIFICTRACKS&formatType=ICAO

As far as a distant point being so far away so as to require allowance for its position in the future, the aircraft all navigate over fixed points over the ground between the departure and destination airports, so that issue doesn't enter the navigational equation. Think of a "trail of breadcrumbs," whose positions don't move on the global surface.

Winds do play a significant role, however.

An aircraft flies at a true airspeed of, say, 400 knots. (True airspeed is the speed at which the aircraft is moving through the air mass, as opposed to ground speed, which is the speed of the aircraft over the ground, which can change with a headwind / tailwind.)

If that aircraft encounter a headwind of 100 knots, it's flying over the ground at 300 knots (400 - 100 = 300).

If that aircraft turns around and flies 180 degrees in the opposite direction in the same wind, it will now be flying over the ground at 500 knots (400 + 100 = 500).

Hope this is informative -

Monty

 

[Jimbo357mag]

Fly an airplane into space? They are working on it. There are probably some military planes that can do it now.

https://futurism.com/skylon-plane-can-fly-anywhere-world-4-hours/

 

[Conservative]

OK, here's my experience.

I've flown to the North Island. It took 13 hours flying for Houton to ...finally to N.Z.

Nice people, never met a single one who wasn't friendly.

I'll never go back.

Why not?

I just found that afterall a while I wanted to meet others who weren't cut out of the same cloth.

Who were they: The ignored by white people. The Maoris - As I'm a Conservative, I'm supposed to be a racist. Which of course is b.s. I found Maoris to be out going good people who I'd rather rub elbows with as most of the N.Z. were frankly, nice, but man, booring...

 

[blume357]

Conservative,

this is what Mark Twain said about that:

"Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime."

 

[Colonialgirl]

Conservative,

this is what Mark Twain said about that:

"Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime."

I've seen plenty of the world; most of the USA (47 of the 57 states), Canada (Toronto), Tijuana (ONCE !!), Hawaii (Oahu and the Big Island) Morocco (French and Spanish at the time), Tangiers, Gibraltar, Spain, England, Wales, Korea, Japan, Wake Island, and Midway Island.