Aircraft routes: what you wanted to know

2024 Author: Harold Hamphrey | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 10:06

Why are aircraft routes not built in a straight line? Why is it always faster to fly back and where can I see a flying plane online? This article will tell about this.

Following the flight

If you are interested in seeing how planes fly, flight routes and more, you can look at services like Flightradar. It is exciting to follow the movement of all airliners in the world online - the data on the servers is updated every half a minute. In addition to observing the figure of the aircraft, you can also find out a set of information about it:

• flight number and airline affiliation;
• photo;
• current speed and altitude;
• point A and point B;
• distance traveled from the airport and more.

Neither presidential planes nor military aircraft will be reflected on these services - only passenger aircraft routes.

Trajectory: straight or curved?

What is the trajectory of the aircraft? Those who have seen the online routes of airplanes, and even frequent flyers, have the impression that the plane is flying in an arc, which is quite strange - is it really "not enough sky"? However, looking again at the line of flight,you will notice that the upper part of the arc tends to the pole. The plane is perfectly logically moving straight, but when the round Earth is projected onto a flat screen, a curve appears instead of a straight line. The correctness of this theory can be confirmed with the help of a student globe and a string stretched between two cities.

But aircraft routes are not a straight line. An airway is a set of straight lines between control points, which, although arranged to make the flight distance as short as possible, still do not draw it perfectly even. For such points, both radio beacons and certain geographical coordinates are taken. Their names are made up of memorable five-letter combinations.

It is also important that for twin-engine aircraft (and there are more and more of them), the route should be built in such a way that in the event of a failure of one engine, the board could "hold out" to the nearest airport. Consequently, its route will be laid in such a way as to go around the poles, deserts and oceans to some extent.

But what about the fact that the flight in one direction is always shorter than the other? Passengers are trying, each in their own way, to explain the phenomenon, to the extent that it is affected by the rotation of the planet. The reason is in the winds. At the height that the aircraft routes are built, in its advantage, the air masses move from west to east. Therefore, with a tailwind, the speed of the aircraft increases, and with the wind "in the nose" it slows down.

Routes at the airport

The reason why the plane landsat the airport, it is on this lane, and not on another, that the wind also appears. Both during takeoff and landing, it must be oncoming, in extreme cases, lateral. With passing - the speed of the aircraft increases, and it may simply not have enough runway length. Therefore, each of them has its own marked number.

An impressive number of restrictions also apply to aircraft routes in the airport area: a ban on flights directly over the city or over a special facility - a secure institution or elite housing, the inhabitants of which are nervous about the constant noise of engines above the house.