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A comment on An account of a serious medical emergency on a transoceanic flight. Parent comment

Re:An account of a serious medical emergency on a transocean... by lucb1e on Saturday September 03, 2016 @09:04AM (#12419037)
Wow, that path looks like it avoids any kind of land on purpose. Might make sense for legal issues, but I'd be much more comfortable if it went partly over South America or Africa (or close to the shore) in case of trouble with the plane.
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Re:An account of a serious medical emergency on a transocean... by mseebach on Saturday September 03, 2016 @09:09AM (#12419052)
That path is a great circle path, it's simply the shortest path across the face of the earth. It's not a flight plan or anything (but, being the shortest path, it's pretty close to what any given flight would follow).

http://www.gcmap.com/faq/intro#definegc

Also, because it's so far from land, there are special procedures that need to be in place, see eg. ETOPS.

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Re:An account of a serious medical emergency on a transocean... by ejstronge on Saturday September 03, 2016 @09:48AM (#12419167)
There are actually regulations about how far an airplane can be from land - it's why so many flight paths are similar (US-Scotland overlaps US-Paris, for example).

You can use this website to see the true flight path for the Johannessburg flight: http://dl.fltmaps.com/en [enter Atlanta and Johannesburg as the endpoints]

EDIT: Can't find an FAA source about distances to airport, but here's a related Wikipedia page. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ETOPS

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Re:An account of a serious medical emergency on a transocean... by mseebach on Saturday September 03, 2016 @09:53AM (#12419185)
That map does not show true flight paths, those are heavily stylised.

This is a true flight path, and it's much closer to the great circle: https://www.flightradar24.com/DAL200/ae190b1

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Re:An account of a serious medical emergency on a transocean... by ejstronge on Sunday September 04, 2016 @11:47AM (#12424922)
You're right - I didn't realize those maps were stylized. Thanks for the correction!
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