I’ve always enjoyed behind-the-scenes stories, and that’s one reason why I love Salon’s Ask the Pilot series (and the fact that pilot “Patrick Smith” is a talented and irreverent writer helps mightily.)

The most recent article added to my knowledge on flight paths. I knew there were established “lanes” that airlines tended to follow, and I also knew that illustrating them with the Mercator (and the Peters) projections was a fool’s errand. What I didn’t know was that the reason a flight from Tahiti to Paris might refuel in Anchorage is known as the “Great Circle.”

Smith does a good job of explaining the concept, and I found a site tool called, aptly, The Great Circle Mapper that illustrates it. The example on that site shows a route from O’Hare to Hong Kong.

It’s not intended to be used for navigation, but it’s a fascinating resource.

This entry was posted on Friday, March 7th, 2003 at 10:56 pm and is filed under Miscellany.. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.