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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 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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