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I'm confused. People are saying this is due to earths curvature, but this is in the northern hemisphere so shorter paths should be more northern, not more southern.
See this map of the actual shortest distance line (purple) for those two points. The image OP's question seems much more reasonable given this information?
The question is very reasonable - and the answer far from obvious as evident from the wrong one being uprooted in this thread. To be clear: I don’t know the answer either, only that you’re right about the curve going the wrong way.
What’s more worrying is the CEO of a global logistics company asking it - and on a public forum rather than of his employees.
It’s akin to a school director standing in the schoolyard during recess and asking why his teachers aren’t in the classroom teaching at that moment.
He's not asking because he understands great circles or is suddenly curious about planes. He's "just asking questions", specifically on a public forum to drum up disinformation and anti-science rhetoric. He's essentially giving a shout-out to his conservative skeptic gang that if powerful rich people question science and common knowledge, they should keep doing it too
I think the more concerning thing is this question appears to be asked in a way that's insulting to the pilot. What was the guy concerned about? Flight time? Fuel use? He could have made a polite question asking pilots on Twitter about what influences flight paths.
The pilot flying the plane obviously chose this path on purpose and this guy takes the very American position that admission of ignorance is a weakness.
The pilot flying the plane obviously chose this path on purpose
I think most corporate pilots have a company center that works out the flight paths for them. This probably doesn't apply to private jets tho.
It’s the way ATC routing works. In this case they might route SFO - IAH traffic over the southern route because it doesn’t interfere with westbound traffic heading to PHX or SFO, and this might be over southern airways. Go IAH - SFO and the route might be northern over LAS as route you plotted shows to mesh with the larger traffic flow going E to W. Who knows. But ATC routing often doesn’t follow a straight line, there’s lots of factors that send aircraft over less efficient routes.
It’s still not a great question in the context OP posted it because, as others have mentioned, the question is phrased as an accusation (JAQ-ing off) that makes no attempt to understand the airspace system and is probably asked in bad faith by Petersen.
My heard-from-online understanding is that this is a combination of multiple factors:
The post is indeed not a great circle.
Redraw the path nearest to the red line but avoid the areas marked in green and you have your answer. Arizona is at a pretty high elevation and the rockies stretch from new mexico through colorado onwards, so they probably fly around the other way under the Rockies.
Edit: i think his question is still disingenuous
It has been my experience that the closer you get to the CEO position the more a person believes "I don't have to know how to do the task, I just have to employ someone who does!"
As someone who has been a CEO (on paper, it was largely meaningless) before...yes...but also have some fucking humility and wisdom and the ability to know what you don't know.
I don't know shit, and I'll admit I don't know shit, and if I feel the need to comment on something I don't know shit about, then maybe I'll defer to someone who is better educated to answer. Jesus christ.
I've found there are two types of "leaders". One are the people you describe, the others are knowledgeable staff who somehow ended up in management at one point and realized they had to stay less the idiots take over.
One also calls themselves "thought leaders" while the other group is still working at 8pm.
I'm no where near the CEO level, but I am a mid level manager. There are enough different things going on in my org that there is no way I could know how to do everything. However, I view my role as empowering and supporting those who do. I understand I can't do the things, so I spend most of my time listening to those who can. The problems come when people start thinking they know better than those doing the work. I strongly believe I work for my team, and if that ever gets me out of alignment with upper management, I've accepted that means I'll be let go. But this model has gotten me great success.
I remember when I was in college in the early 2000's, one of my close friends found work under the table writing original research papers for students at more prestigious universities. That way, the rich kids could plagiarize a paper but since it was wholly original and had never been seen anywhere else, they couldn't get caught for plagiarism. It helped my friend out a lot when he was in a tight spot trying to get his Masters degree, but... I've thought about it a lot over the years and the long-term impacts.
I think this is one of the long-term impacts. People who have credentials, but credentials essentially mean nothing because a lot of the "work" they did to get those credentials was paid-for or faked. This has lead to a world where the people "running the show" as it were are deeply uneducated while the people doing the actual labor and thought who are often getting underpaid are wildly more educated than the people they have to suffer under working for.
The wealthy have become so privileged that they don't even need to know the details of how anything actually works and now they are going to make all of us suffer because they don't believe the evidence that would have been presented to them at some point if they had actually gotten a real education.
This is precisely why I'm terrified of the generation that's going through college with chatgpt right now. These people will be doctors and nurses.
Thanks, that's a scary af thought 🥶
This has always been the case though. The wealthy have rarely known more than how to get and maintain wealth, which isn't that hard when you're statistically born into it.
Pretty sure paying for someone to do your homework is a thing in India for the wealthy. There are also lots of rich students, who were failed by teachers in tests, give a not so subtle threatening question "do you know who my father is?" As a result, plenty of people attain higher job positions without the actual merit.
It's a thing everywhere. Donald Trump has a degree and he sure as fuck doesn't know anything about anything.
Out of curiosity, why *is* it not flying in a straight line? Curvature of the Earth or something?
There are mountains and multiple no-fly zones along the direct path. They're avoiding those.
While there is obviously a lot of military restricted airspace around Nellis, China Lake, and Irwin, the planned route takes the flight 100s of miles further south than necessary.
They are following charted airway routes designated by the FAA. These routes exist to help manage air traffic, ensure accurate navigation, and avoid collisions. Few if any direct routes exist between airports.