[HN Gopher] Polar Express - How Airlines are plotting a new-rout... ___________________________________________________________________ Polar Express - How Airlines are plotting a new-route to Asia Author : News-Dog Score : 141 points Date : 2022-03-20 13:26 UTC (9 hours ago) (HTM) web link (edition.cnn.com) (TXT) w3m dump (edition.cnn.com) | sydthrowaway wrote: | I would just cancel the flight. Helsinki Tokyo seems like a very | unpopular route | chinathrow wrote: | Flying Finnair, you even get a North Pole Flyover Certificate :) | | https://www.finnair.com/en/bluewings/world-of-finnair/flying... | heikkilevanto wrote: | Reminds me of a trick question from the time Finnair started to | fly over the pole: Once there was so much demand, that they had | to fly with two planes. They flew side by side, directly over | the pole. So one of them crossed the international date line | and the other did not. How come they landed on the same date? | scatters wrote: | The IDL isn't the only line of longitude where the date | changes; there is another, the line of midnight. Either one | plane crossed each, putting both on the next day, or one | crossed both, with opposite sense. | [deleted] | dmichulke wrote: | If you fly over the pole you basically cover 180 degrees of | longitude, and it matters little whether you take the 180 | that cross the date line or the 180 degrees that don't. | | Crossing the date line is just an artifact of the singularity | at the pole. | Merad wrote: | The article contradicts its own title. This isn't a new route, | the same polar route was used 35 years ago up until the cold war | ended and they were allowed to overfly Russian airspace. | eesmith wrote: | They weren't flying ETOPS-300 35 years ago. | | > The new Arctic route, however, flies over very remote areas, | where airports are few and far between. As a result, the | airline had to apply for an extension of that protocol to 300 | minutes, meaning the Airbus A350-900s it uses to fly to Japan | can now stray as far as five hours away from the nearest | airport, while still meeting all international regulations and | safety protocols. | skybrian wrote: | The details are different enough that it's arguable. Before | there was a stop in Anchorage, and they presumably didn't fly | two-engine aircraft on this route before. | yborg wrote: | The route originally was flown by 3 or 4 engine aircraft so a | single engine failure still left you with at least 2. They are | now flying it with an A350 twin-engine. Worst case you are 5 | hours from a landing site with one engine. | jacquesm wrote: | Which is _at least_ as safe and probably much safer. | humanistbot wrote: | To me, "plotting a new route" means they are changing how they | get from A to B. | | I am a passenger in a car with a friend, carpooling to work. I | say, "it looks like there is a wreck on the highway in a few | miles, want me to find a new route to work?" That makes perfect | sense. It doesn't matter if my friend and I have taken this | alternate route before. It means we are changing our plan. | ck2 wrote: | Is that going to stomp on the accelerator for climate change to | have increased jet traffic burning fuel near/over the pole? | | This war might be going on for the rest of the decade, has there | ever been that much traffic over the pole that we know for sure | what will/won't happen? | late2part wrote: | We do not know for sure what will/won't happen. | vaylian wrote: | This is a good point, because the arctic is more severely | affected by greenhouse gases than other regions: | https://council.science/current/blog/climate-explained-why-i... | | Having an increased local greenhouse emission in that area | could accelerate the loss of ice. | nuccy wrote: | Since some European counties now considers recovery of nuclear | power [1], the overall emissions will likely actually decrease, | even despite this increase due to longer flightroutes. Fuel | prices also rise, which yield less driving. | | 1. https://www.politico.eu/article/belgium-delays-nuclear- | phase... | emteycz wrote: | These planes however might have enough measurable influence | on the local microclimate that may increase the rate of | methane leaks. I haven't checked the numbers though. | sokoloff wrote: | Aviation emissions are around 2% of total emissions (but have a | stronger effect on a per-ton basis, so might be 5% of total | effect). These routes are a tiny, tiny slice of the aviation | sector. | vaylian wrote: | But anyone taking such a plane trip will exceed their own | carbon budget for that year. We really need to rethink | aviation and we really need to reconsider how much of it is | actually needed. I would not be surprised if 99% of all | flights could be eliminated if we accepted living in a slower | world. | rblatz wrote: | I'm unaware of a specific carbon budget that I am supposed | to be following. | mantas wrote: | My bet is on flying becoming much more expensive. Which | will fix the carbon budget issue. | Svip wrote: | SAS was the first airline to introduce a polar route in 1957 to | avoid Soviet airspace, making a stop in Alaska on its way to | Japan.[1] | | [1] https://airwaysmag.com/today-in-aviation/worlds-first-com- | tr... | version_five wrote: | That article seems to be saying that they introduced the route | to save time vs a longer, unspecified route - unless I missed | it, I didn't see anything about soviet airspace. | | Flying from CPH to HND via Alaska adds almost 2300 miles vs | flying direct over Russia: | | http://www.gcmap.com/mapui?P=cph-hnd;+cph-anc-hnd | Svip wrote: | The Soviet blockage was a motivation for exploring the polar | route rather than a direct route through Russia and China, | since both of those airspaces were closed.[1] While it turned | out to be even shorter, it wasn't a route without | difficulties, as emergency landings would prove very | difficult compared to over south Asia. | | [1] https://www.primidi.com/scandinavian_airlines/history/tra | ns_... | version_five wrote: | Thanks for the link. Also, I was just playing with routes, | and it looks like a route (that I roughly constructed) | under russia is still 100s of miles shorter than through | Alaska (for the hypothetical CPH-HND route). I don't know | if there are other issues with flying over any of those | countries. And maybe with Alaska as a hub, it could end up | being more efficient to fly there and then switch and | onward to eastern Asia, although I thought that newer | planes were favoring direct routes rather than huge planes | between hubs, e.g. the A350 vs A380. | | Not to mention, historically people who don't have to often | avoid connecting in the US because I think there is / was | an extra visa burden, even if it's just for transit. I | think many people might avoid a route that makes them enter | the US, though mayb things have changed and it's less of | hassle. | | http://www.gcmap.com/mapui?P=cph-ist-gyd-ala-pek-hnd;+cph- | an... | bobthepanda wrote: | Early planes like the 707 could not make it all the way | to Asia in one go, so the stop in ANC was necessary. It's | the largest airport for hundreds of miles in any | direction. | | That route also goes through the PRC which was closed for | a few decades to outside airplanes as well. And some of | the other countries on the map were part of the USSR as | well. | logbiscuitswave wrote: | The article mentioned flying under Russia would be a | longer distance but could be faster with favorable wind | conditions. I'm guessing they are leaning toward more | predictable conditions with their chosen route. | acwan93 wrote: | Does this mean Anchorage's airport is going to get increased | traffic again? I'd imagine planes today have the range to not | need a stopover compared to the Cold War era. | guipsp wrote: | While it isn't needed, I do imagine for western europe is | might be worth it to stop over _somewhere_ , in order to be | more cost-efficient | ozim wrote: | To be cost efficient I bet it would be "not stopping". | filereaper wrote: | I wonder how many direct routes just aren't possible anymore as | they can't fly over Russian airspace and can't fit within ETOPS | safety margins. | | We had our direct flight from EWR-BOM cancelled due to the | current issues. | megablast wrote: | Of course, ewr to bom. Everyone knows those codes. | jasonwatkinspdx wrote: | It's been interesting to check the situation occasionally on | sites like flightaware. Definitely a lot of traffic rerouting | through Turkish airspace. | leoedin wrote: | Newark to Mumbai, for those that don't memorise airport codes. | fortran77 wrote: | A flight I took last week, TLV->SFO went within 20 miles of | Ukraine -- it usually flew right over it. Today I'm on the flight | back, and I've heard that they will be rerouting even further, | and add about 25 minutes to the flight plan. | | (Here's the old route: https://onemileatatime.com/el-al-sfo-tel- | aviv-flight/) | trhway wrote: | Still too close. About a week ago a stray huge supersonic drone | flew out of Ukraine over Romania and crashed in Slovakia if I'm | not mistaken. | t0mas88 wrote: | Your "huge supersonic drone" is in reality a subsonic one, | that's smaller than an F16 and flies no higher than 19,700ft | while a typical airliner cruises at 35,000 to 41,000ft | trhway wrote: | It is huge by drones standards. It shows that it is easy to | miss a missile or a plane in the air there. Russia attacked | targets 20 km from Poland border. It is just a bit more | than a minute of flying of a transonic plane and even less | for a high-speed missile. 60-80 km is inside a normal | combat range for S-300 air-defense system. The point is | that 45 miles from the border you can still easily happen | to step into a combat zone and get into a path of a plane | running and maneuvering away from a missile or a missile | chasing or even lost/reacquired target. The next link | illustrates dangers of flying even 300 kilometers away from | firing air-defense systems even during the peace time | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siberia_Airlines_Flight_1812 | tomaskafka wrote: | Zagreb, Croatia: https://www.bbc.com/news/world- | europe-60709952.amp | jacquesm wrote: | Too close for comfort, you really don't want to be on the next | MH-17, and I _really_ would not put it past Russia to pull | stunts like that again. The safe range from any airspace that | has Russian controlled hardware in it is roughly the range of | their AA missiles. | rwmj wrote: | Should we be concerned about ETOPS (colloquially "Engines Turn Or | Passengers Swim") being extended to 300 minutes? That's up to 5 | hours of hand-flying a jet with a failed engine. | turrican wrote: | In most or all modern airliners, the autopilot can be re- | engaged after an engine failure. | | Certainly still stressful, but they don't need to hand-fly it. | Idiot211 wrote: | You wouldn't need to hand-fly in most instances, Autopilot will | remain on and is more than capable of dealing with single | engine operations on dual engine aircaft. | | Of course it's always an issue if an engine does fail, but | ETOPS as a certification is there to ensure that airplanes and | pilots are not put under unreasonable amounts of stress or | issue if and when an engine fails over-water. | mikeodds wrote: | Fun fact you will also get a higher dose of radiation taking | North Pole routes | mullingitover wrote: | How many bananas would the dose be equivalent to? | _jal wrote: | Approximately one half of a giraffe. | [deleted] | layer8 wrote: | So... half a banana? | https://www.flickr.com/photos/142588576@N03/37705075472 | CoastalCoder wrote: | Can't believe this just occurred to me now, but do passengers | on the polar route ever get good views of the Northern Lights? | [deleted] | Hallucinaut wrote: | I've seen them on a flight before quite some distance from | the north pole. I am not 100% certain on the flight but I | think it was a Norwegian Air Dreamliner flight from London to | New York, which still goes reasonably far north. | jfk13 wrote: | We had a spectacular view of them a few years ago on a | flight from Portland (OR) to London. | kylehotchkiss wrote: | United forced the window shades closed on the 787 trips I | took over the arctic circle. Couldn't even see them if you | wanted to. | alkonaut wrote: | Even the regular not-quite-north-pole-but-over-65-north are | more than good enough. In fact, since the aurora is an oval, | it's _better_ to be a bit further south than at the pole. Not | sure which the best latitude is, but guessing it 's arund 70 | north or so. | hectormalot wrote: | I've once had an amazing view on the northern lights flying | icelandair. Crew went around waking people up so they could | see it. | traceroute66 wrote: | > Fun fact you will also get a higher dose of radiation taking | North Pole routes | | It only matters for _very_ frequent flyers (i.e. people who put | in almost as many hours as flight crew). | | For your average Joe that barely flies much, it won't make any | difference. | type0 wrote: | it does matter for the airplane staff | traceroute66 wrote: | > it does matter for the airplane staff | | Yes it does, but you don't need to worry about that. | | There are already procedures in place for "normal" | operations. | | It only needs a few tiny changes to take into account the | arctic route, and I'm sure all the airlines have already | done that. | | Basically they only need to tweak shift rotas a little. For | most airlines you won't even notice the impact on flight | scheduling. | Tepix wrote: | That depends on the airline of course | chinathrow wrote: | Yeah but this should be tracked by airlines, if I recall | correctly. | unnouinceput wrote: | Pretty sure the airplane will, not the passengers inside. | mikekij wrote: | The people inside will absolutely receive a larger radiation | dose. A thin metal shell does not block a large percentage of | cosmic radiation. | fosk wrote: | I wonder if planes could be built in such a way to include | two sheets of outside layer, with a gas (can a gas be used | to shield radiation?) in between those sheets to shield the | passengers from outside radiation. | | Or maybe use a polyethylene layer? | roywiggins wrote: | Cosmic radiation will penetrate anything that isn't, | like, a good-size chunk of lead. | jasonwatkinspdx wrote: | The bulk of the radiation are cosmic rays or things | showered from them. Shielding isn't practical. | | But also, on the scale of things to worry about in life, | this is way down there. | paxys wrote: | So will taking a CT scan or eating a banana or some nuts. That | statement is meaningless unless you can quantify it. | MomoXenosaga wrote: | Good. Imagine you're a Russian political refugee. You don't want | to fly over Russian airspace and have your plane forced to land | by Russian MIGs. | Lordarminius wrote: | >Imagine you're a Russian political refugee. You don't want to | fly over Russian airspace and have your plane forced to land by | Russian MIGs. | | Like the US doesn't do the same or worse ? | int_19h wrote: | Not to Russian political refugees. | tormock wrote: | > You don't want to fly over Russian airspace and have your | plane forced to land by Russian MIGs. | | Can't they just ask like the US Government does? | | I.E.: https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2013/07/03/edsn-j03.html | danuker wrote: | I am appalled. Not very surprised, but still appalled. | tormock wrote: | It's one of the 3 things that Obama did (or didn't do) that | disappointed me the most. | NullPrefix wrote: | Has that ever happened before? Belarus, sure, it did happen, | but what about Russia? | regnull wrote: | I guess we don't want to wait to find out. | ciabattabread wrote: | How do all these new polar routes affect the workload of the | people staffing our Arctic radar stations, if at all? | ptero wrote: | If you mean en route radars, those should not be affected. | Those are big rotators that work the same, 24x7, regardless of | how many planes are in the area of the coverage. | nabla9 wrote: | No. Civilian aircraft have transponders on. They can be | identified easily. | traceroute66 wrote: | > How do all these new polar routes affect the workload of the | people staffing our Arctic radar stations, if at all? | | If you are referring to the people doing the radio work, | through the magic of HF radio they sit in a nice warm office in | Ontario, Canada. | | I doubt it will increase their workload much as its not a busy | route and there's not much ATC to do given the sparse nature of | the region. Its more of a monitoring service per-se. | | P.S. They are not "new" routes. They've been around for | decades, just lost popularity due to better options. | rconti wrote: | I thought Russia charged huge fees for airlines to fly through | their airspace. Apparently that's not true anymore, but this | BusinessInsider BlogPostThing has a lot of interesting history I | wasn't aware of. | | https://www.businessinsider.com/russia-uses-airspace-restric... | dcanelhas wrote: | I wonder if one could build a couple of aircraft carrier for | commercial airliners and post them out in the Pacific somewhere | to get shorter ETOPS-compliant flight paths. | | I also wonder how much fuel is spent carrying fuel and if | emissions wouldn't be lower if they would fly shorter legs on | fumes and do frequent refueling stops. | iancmceachern wrote: | It's not as if the navy airplanes that take off and land from | carriers are standard issue planes. There are very specific, | pretty risky tech that goes into each catapult launch, arrested | landing, etc. Doing so in an airliner full of passengers would | be too risky in my view. | | Not to mention the size of aircraft carrier that would be | required to land even a 737. | weberer wrote: | There is no possible way that a commercial airliner can land on | an aircraft carrier. | adhesive_wombat wrote: | They can definitely touch down on one. They just can't also | come to a stop on the same one. | | Though if you fitted a tail hook to a 747, probably _some_ of | that 747 could be said to have landed there. Maybe a few | passengers too, and you could claim the fastest | disembarkation speeds for them too! | thombat wrote: | Minimum runway length quoted for Boeing 777 take-offs is 2500m, | plus a 240m runway end safety area (a sandpit it can plow into | if the takeoff is aborted without remaining space to halt). On | an aircraft carrier this might be shortened a little since the | ship can steam into whatever wind is present, but compare that | to the 333m long flight deck on the new Gerald Ford class | aircraft carriers and the impossibility is plain to see. | RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote: | Also the aircraft landing on a carrier have tail hooks to | stop themselves and an undercarriage that is designed for | those stresses. | jacquesm wrote: | And they don't weigh 200 tons... | mrec wrote: | I wonder what the limits are on how far something like | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Habakkuk could be | scaled up. | jacquesm wrote: | No. | | Really, I have no idea if this comment was in jest or halfway | serious but there isn't any way passenger planes will _ever_ | land on any of the existing aircraft carriers. Width, Runway | length, arrestor strength, inability to do cat launches with | something that heavy and so on. It isn 't going to happen. | jeromegv wrote: | That's when you know the technical conversation in this | thread will go nowhere. That's the solution? Aircraft | carriers? Really? Some tech people do have a strong sense of | entitlement about how easy some problems are to solve. | adhesive_wombat wrote: | Landing a passenger jet on an aircraft carrier really would | be "moving fast and breaking things". | twoneurons wrote: | supernova87a wrote: | I don't know if any others of you are of a certain age and | remember having to fly through Anchorage in your youth... Back | when DC10s either couldn't make it all the way nonstop, or for | cost reasons a stopover in AK made it marginally profitable. | reaperducer wrote: | I still use "borrowed" Northwest Orient flatware. ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2022-03-20 23:00 UTC)