Real World Flight Plan Question?

This question is for the real world airline pilots.

Every time I've flown to Europe from a U.S. east coast airport such as Atlanta, mainly to the Netherlands or Germany, the route is always via the Northern Atlantic up to Iceland, down to the United Kingdom and then onto the continent. I've flown into Amsterdam, Luxembourg and Frankfurt and its always roughly the same route.

Isn't that a longer route or am I missing something? Curvature of the earth?

Mike, what you need is a globe and a piece of string. Put one end of the string at Atlanta (or other departure airport), and the other end at the destination airport, then tighten the string so it's straight.

 

Now look at the globe and you'll see that while the aircraft flies in a straight line (along the string) where the route will take you on the ground.

 

Jorgen

It's called a great circle route, and is the shortest distance on a globe. Jorgen's example should help you visualize it nicely.

Yep, I forgot to say it's called the great circle route. It looks different on a flat map, because of the projection techniques used to put the globe on a flat piece of paper. For instance, if you look at a normal map of the world, it's usually made using Mercator's method of projection, and if you compare for instance Greenland on the map to the Greenland on the globe, you'll see a huge distortion in size on the map, especially as you go north.

 

Jorgen

Thanks Jorgen and Inuss. I had a feeling it was literally the shape of the globe but it's so easy to believe that it's the airlines simply torturing us with a longer flight than necessary! Lol.