The airplane aboard which I was a passenger was flying at 36,002 feet over Sand Point in the Aleutian Islands of Alaska as I wrote this article. Have you ever wondered why would airplanes fly north just to head back south?
Why Airplanes Fly North Just to Head Back South
During a recent flight from Seattle to Taiwan, the flight path of the airplane was routed northward to Alaska before heading back southbound along the coast of Asia towards Taipei. When looking at the route on a flat two-dimensional map, that route gives the perception that the airplane was going out of its way with a substantial detour on a circuitous route instead of traveling in a straight line, which seems unnecessarily inefficient…
…but in fact, I used the interactive flight map that was included in the in-flight entertainment system aboard the airplane to adjust the view of the Earth to show that the airplane did indeed travel in a straight line along the shortest route possible between Seattle and Taipei — so the airplane actually took the most efficient routing possible for its flight path in terms of time and usage of fuel. This route is known as the great circle route, which is the shortest distance between two points on the surface of a sphere — especially when viewing it on a globe or a map that more accurately emulates a sphere.
Not only does taking this route save time and conserves fuel; but it also allows the airplane to divert to a mass of land that is nearby in the unlikely event of an emergency. One of the reasons why most commercial airplanes do not follow a similar great circle route in the southern hemisphere over Antarctica is that fewer safe places exist to land the airplane as quickly as possible in an emergency situation.
Jet streams at high altitudes in the atmosphere along the great circle route may also contribute to increase the speed of the airplane, which can further save time and money.
Final Boarding Call
Airlines are loathe to spend more money than necessary on fuel and time to fly their airplanes out of the way during flights; so know that the pilots are taking the shortest route possible for flights — with the exception of factors such as weather that can cause the flight to be forced to temporarily veer off course…
All photographs ©2024 and ©2026 by Brian Cohen.
