See this is why Trump needs to cut the FAA and its wasteful spending!
/s
Types fast, thinks slow
why even fly? Just jump up high in San Francisco, and wait for the earth to revolve beneath you before coming back down and landing in Houston. Houston, no problem.
We don’t live in a Meritocracy, not even close.
It’s a Charismacracy; those who can out-popular the others wins.
It’s not even out popular others, its if you have the money, you just buy yourself the merit. You win because of you family name. You can buy your way into the best schools, and quite possibly pay others to do your work, or just flat out pay for better grades, I mean who in their right mind is going to flunk the child a major school benefactor?
More like “He who pops from the right (read: sufficiently wealthy) vagina wins!”
True meritocracy had never been implemented in any human society larger than a small village.
It had been partially implemented in several places/times
What we have today is a partially implemented one in middle management, technocrats and engineers.
Where out of touch upper management and owners are the rule. But if I look at any successful company I will find the tech and middle management running it day to day
We’re so close to just having the workers run their own affairs, the table is set we just have to make everyone realize the actual owners are useless and do nothing
And more than just realizing that, we need to find a realistic path to take that power away from them.
And more than that not have a different group of upper class later. As had happened always.
I’d rather not go through the churn if no real difference a few years later
For those wondering why it did fly that way, it was a whole thing on Twitter: weather, fly zones, mostly.
https://www.thepoke.com/2025/02/26/elon-musk-said-planes-fly-straight-line-owned-into-economy-class/
Obviously the permanent main character on Twitter popped up to assert that planes must go straight despite flying in a private jet constantly that doesn’t do that, and after a few hours the original guy said he asked the pilot when they landed (20 min ahead of schedule) and the pilot told him it was to avoid turbulence, which is likely what they say when a full answer seems like it’ll just go over folks heads.
Elon Musk “rocket scientist”
There’s also the Great Circle flight paths. Essentially, because the earth is round, it’s actually a shorter distance to fly in an “arc” (when looking at a flat map). In the below picture, the upper curved line is actually shorter than the lower straight line:
Here’s another image which demonstrates why the curved line looks longer on a flat map:
And because of how map projections work, this applies to virtually any flight path that isn’t directly north/south… Just like the one in OP’s photo.
The path in the post has nothing to do with the great circle. The shortest path is very similar to how it appears on the Mercator projection (actually slightly bent in the other direction) because SF and Houston are fairly close and in a position where Mercator distortions are less pronounced.
Also, a line is the shortest path when the 2 points are both on the Equator (where the projection distortion is zero)
It’s also good to mention that the projection shown in the tweet wasn’t Mercator either, it was a globe rendered via Apple Maps.
Worth pointing out too, that the air isn’t “flat” either, you can have headwinds, tailwinds, and turbulence that will affect the shortest and most economical path.
There’s also the fact that the earth is an oblate spheroid and great circles are the shortest distance between two points on that shape. (Though this may not apply for short flights like this.)
And it doesn’t apply because it would be curved upwards
America’s just fat. Big ol’ lump sticking out of the disc. The turtle under us is getting arthritis.
Because the chemtrails turned the flight paths gay
no, this is SF to LA. It was the estrogen in the water that turned the flight path gay.
Musk’s DOGE let data leak, erased data from a goverment db by misstake, fired important figure working with nuke programs, Ebola and more in front of the whole fucking world.
Can you imagine a bigger fuck up?
For now I assume that the whole thing is working out well for Mr. Musk. By now he has probably weakened the specific agencies that were a thorn in his side sufficiently he’ll earn back the few hundred million it cost him to buy that position.
So he’s not an idiot, but he’s a problem.
Yes, the person who hired Musk
And the 77 million people who voted for that person despite knowing exactly who he was.
Ah, but he didn’t hire him, he just made him an advisor. Hiring him would required oversight that would have given others a chance to give a firm “Fuck No”.
I don’t get it
it’s slightly curved, because earth is not flat, and is constantly spinning. also there might be weather/air current concerns that would save time/fuel. this is like the first thing you learn drinking on the other side of a bar from someone who has ever interacted with the ‘actually doing things’ side of any aircraft.
plus security concerns. lots of shady crap in california they don’t want just anyone looking at from above.
Map flat
Earth round
Straight line on round not straight on flat
CEO of company that moves items around earth does not know this
…
You do realize that it’s bigger closer to the equator, right? If that was the reason, it would curve to the north, not to the south. By curving to the south it’s actually taking a longer distance.
Is there a lemmy equivalent of r/confidentlywrong?
Most of the time all of lemmy is r/iamsmart
You can be the dumbest mother fucker the Earth has ever produced and you will still easily be able get a business degree from any greasy college of your choice.
DonaldTrumpWhartonCollege.jpg
It’s wild to me that consumting has become such a massive industry in the last 20 years. It’s all just a bunch of kids freah out of college with zero experience in anything practical telling you to cut costs, raises prices, and do light crime. Why do companies pay millions when the CEO’s dumbass son could have just told them the same thing?
CYA and possibly liability reasons. “I didn’t make the bad decision, I was following the advice of the consultants.”
But also there are times you actually do need advice from experts. Not all consultants are bad. But yeah, a lot of it is just CYA stuff.
“Consumpting” is an impressively opaque typo, for being one letter off.
Sunday morning typing is hard after clubbing all night. not too bad for seeing double
Without knowing the flight number, airline and date, we don’t know the route it’s scheduled to fly. It may stop in LA or Phoenix. Need more info.
I think he is referring to the dotted line path.
He should ask Luigi for a detailed description of fly-zones, fuel consumption vs altitude and terrain, and air traffic (timing) to a lesser extent.
You are way overthinking it, the problem suggested by OP is much simpler: it‘s all about the mercator projection of the map.
nope. This is the straight line path on a Mercator map
I know, but thats what OP from screenshots suggestion most likely was.
I hate people who blame the Mercator projection without properly learning about what is wrong with it.
- This is not a Mercator projection map. The northern side of the US is straight and horizontal on Mercartor maps.
- “Straight lines” on a globe (great circles) on the Northern hemisphere bend in this ⏜ way, not this ⏝ on a Mercartor map.
- Flattening a sphere without compromises is impossible. Most other projections are either unusable in many local contexts or don’t span the globe. Mercator (specifically the WGS-84 implementation) works very well unless your journey goes over ±84° latitude, which is OK for most cases. Every other projection will stretch, skew or cut local areas in major ways and EVERY ONE WILL SHOW (almost every instance of) THE SHORTEST (great circle) PATH AS NOT STRAIGHT.
I’m rather impressed by your two unicode curve examples
I’ve scrolled through UnicodePad so many times I know what to expect where, so I usually only have to skim through one to three block.
If that is the case, then op is wrong, that’s not how mercator works (the opposite actually).
(I’m glad this isn’t Reddit or I would be forced by custom to explain in detail the sexy times I had with their mother.)But aviation logistic is complex (duh), there are so many things.
Among which I now realise I previously forgot to mention various weather phenomena (that can make you save fuel).
explain in detail
please do.
“Sadly” not really. As this is the northern hemisphere the “shorter” path would be an arc opening downwards. As others have commented, there are other reasons for this route.
They neither teach nor require smart at management schools.
Pretty sure planes usually don’t fly perfectly straight lines A to B for the entire flight. There are often things to avoid, you might go from waypoint A to B to C to D with a straightish line between each. But you would want to avoid areas for various reasons. Go around high traffic areas you don’t need to be in, dangerous weather or just avoiding turbulence within reason, make sure you are dropping the chemtrails over populated areas.
Last flight I was on did a big ass loop. Kinda wanted to ask the pilot why he did that, but it was a longer than expected flight and I just wanted to go home. The weather was shit, so I’m guessing the airport was temporarily closed because of that. Probably the pilot knew the weather situation and took on extra fuel so he could just fly around for a while if the airport was temporarily closed.
So yeah, there’s a lot of little details that would make sense if you’re on the plane, but looks really weird if the only thing you’re looking at is a flight path.
I’m confused. People are saying this is due to earths curvature, but this is in the northern hemisphere so shorter paths should be more northern, not more southern.
See this map of the actual shortest distance line (purple) for those two points. The image OP’s question seems much more reasonable given this information?
- The question is not stupid at all.
- we would expect the CEO of a logistics company to be able to answer such a question (or at least know who to ask to get the right answer), instead of asking it on X. Asking it on X at best shows of his ignorance, or at worst pushes a conspiracy theory.
It’s the way ATC routing works. In this case they might route SFO - IAH traffic over the southern route because it doesn’t interfere with westbound traffic heading to PHX or SFO, and this might be over southern airways. Go IAH - SFO and the route might be northern over LAS as route you plotted shows to mesh with the larger traffic flow going E to W. Who knows. But ATC routing often doesn’t follow a straight line, there’s lots of factors that send aircraft over less efficient routes.
It’s still not a great question in the context OP posted it because, as others have mentioned, the question is phrased as an accusation (JAQ-ing off) that makes no attempt to understand the airspace system and is probably asked in bad faith by Petersen.
Planes don’t fly great circle routes though, there’s overfly fees, weather, mountains, ETOPS and just plain politics… This route looks ordinary compared to some international routes, eg Helsinki to Singapore where you dodge Russia and Ukraine for politics, taking you way below the great circle route, then Turkey for overfly fees and Iran for politics, taking you almost back up to the great circle route
Not sure if flying over Afghanistan is a better option than Iran tho. Betting on the Taliban (or the various groups they’re fighting against) don’t have the capability to shoot down airplanes I guess.
That route just looks like a minefield considering the geopoltics along most of that path.
Why would the Taliban want to shoot down a plane? They’re not terrorists like IS or Al-Qaeda and they’re not antsy enough to shoot down a plane first and think later like Iran are, nor is it an active warzone… They just want to commit human rights violations in peace and shooting down a plane is a golden ticket to foreign intervention.
you dodge… Iran for politics
Except Northern Iran, from the looks of it
Green is actual data, white is straight lines connecting the green, but they don’t have data.
The cut across Northern Iran is just a straight line, but they will have stayed north of the border.
My heard-from-online understanding is that this is a combination of multiple factors:
- planes tend to route over major airports so that there’s always an emergency landing site nearby
- there are restricted airspaces that commercial planes cannot fly through
- the most direct path sometimes isn’t the best path. There are stable wind channels in certain areas of the world and it’s more efficient to ride the wind channel than to fly in a straight line
- planes tend to route over major airports so that there’s always an emergency landing site nearby
I think you’ve got it right. This flight path is basically:
SFO > LAX > PHX > ELP > AUS > IAH
The question is very reasonable - and the answer far from obvious as evident from the wrong one being uprooted in this thread. To be clear: I don’t know the answer either, only that you’re right about the curve going the wrong way.
What’s more worrying is the CEO of a global logistics company asking it - and on a public forum rather than of his employees.
It’s akin to a school director standing in the schoolyard during recess and asking why his teachers aren’t in the classroom teaching at that moment.
I think the more concerning thing is this question appears to be asked in a way that’s insulting to the pilot. What was the guy concerned about? Flight time? Fuel use? He could have made a polite question asking pilots on Twitter about what influences flight paths.
The pilot flying the plane obviously chose this path on purpose and this guy takes the very American position that admission of ignorance is a weakness.
The pilot flying the plane obviously chose this path on purpose
I think most corporate pilots have a company center that works out the flight paths for them. This probably doesn’t apply to private jets tho.
He’s not asking because he understands great circles or is suddenly curious about planes. He’s “just asking questions”, specifically on a public forum to drum up disinformation and anti-science rhetoric. He’s essentially giving a shout-out to his conservative skeptic gang that if powerful rich people question science and common knowledge, they should keep doing it too
The post is indeed not a great circle.
Redraw the path nearest to the red line but avoid the areas marked in green and you have your answer
