If you’ve ever looked at a flight tracker
sometime around 10 or 11 pm eastern, you might
have noticed something—perfect lines of
planes stretching all the way to Europe.
These are just some of the over 2,000 daily
flights that cross the Northern Atlantic.
With so many flights, there just has to be
organization.
This is the most direct route from New York
to London.
You may think it’s this, a straight line,
but that straight line isn’t actually a
straight line.
This curved line is a straight line because,
despite what some may think, the earth is
curved.
From New York to London the curve you see
on a flat map isn’t too extreme, but in
the case of a longer flight, such as from
New York to Bangkok, the most direct route
is not this, but this—straight over the
North Pole.
It makes more since if you look at a north-pole
oriented map.
If you draw the most direct route between
Atlanta and London, you’ll see that it passes
over every major east coast international
airport.
That means that planes from Atlanta to Europe
travel on the exact same route as planes from
Charlotte, Washington, Baltimore, Philadelphia,
New York and Boston.
On top of that, all these transatlantic planes
typically leave between 6-8 pm Eastern to
time their arrival for early morning in Europe.
This means that there are potentially hundreds
of planes all going the exact same route at
the exact same time.
The North Atlantic also has something known
as the Jet Stream.
These easterly winds average around 110 mph
and if planes fly in them, they can cut hours
of their travel time, however, the winds are
only strongest in a line three miles high
(5 km) and 100 miles (160 km) wide.
That further concentrates the flights.
On average, an eastbound transatlantic flight
from New York to London takes about 6 hours
and 15 minutes.
Coming back against the jet stream, the same
flight takes over 7 hours.
Sometimes, the winds can be even more active
such as on January 8th, 2015 when British
Airways flight 114 flew from New York to London
in only 5 hours and 16 minutes—a new record
for a commercial subsonic plane.
On that day, the jet stream was blowing over
200 mph (320 km/h) and the Boeing 777 reached
a speed of 745 mph (1200 km/h) —only 16
mph (25 km/h) below the sound barrier.
So when winds can cut an hour off a flight
and a 777 burns 2,700 gallons (10,200 liters)
of fuel per hour and jet fuel costs $1.89
per gallon, that’s a $5,103 difference between
being in the right, and the wrong winds.
Hopefully you now see why this is important.
So there are all these planes that are flying
the exact same route, but usually that’s
no problem.
The busiest route in North America, New York
to Chicago, sees over 100 flights per day
leaving as frequently as every five minutes
during the morning and evening rush and these
planes just fly the most efficient route.
Before the flight, route planners file a plan
with air traffic control and during the flight,
they’re just directed by air traffic control
in a way that keeps them 5 nautical miles
from other planes.
The difference between New York to Chicago
and New York to London is that, over the North
Atlantic, there is no radar.
You see, radar only extends about 250 miles
offshore.
Transatlantic planes can be more than a thousand
miles from shore.
That’s why every morning, the route planners
at Gander Air Traffic Control Center in Gander,
Newfoundland publish the days North Atlantic
Tracks.
The night before, every airline that will
fly across the atlantic the following day
sends Gander a preferred route message indicating
what they think the best route will be.
For the most part, Gander center follows these
requests and creates a set of 10 or so routes.
These tracks attempt to get the most amount
of planes on the most efficient route to Europe.
The tracks are labeled: Zulu being the southernmost
route, Yankee being the second southernmost,
then Xray, then Whisky, and so on and so forth.
Here’s how a flight on the tracks works,
and I’ll warn you, this is when the video
gets technical.
Let’s say we’re going from New York to
Paris.
Around half an hour before scheduled departure,
the captain talks to normal air traffic control
to request clearance for the route up to around
Newfoundland, Canada.
In most cases clearance is given, and soon
after we’ll take off.
ABOUT when the plane crosses the Gulf of St
Lawrence, the pilot will request the North
Atlantic Track that he or she desires.
Here’s today’s message describing the
day’s routes over the Atlantic.
After looking over this, the pilot decides
to request track Whisky.
That means that, at least for now, we’ll
head towards the RAFIN waypoint, our oceanic
entry point.
Waypoints are fixed spots that are used for
flight navigation.
These are much easier for Air Traffic Control
to communicate to pilots than map coordinates
when speaking over radio.
Occasionally you’ll see some creatively
named waypoints.
Just north of Lebanon, New Hampshire are HAMMM,
BURGR, and FRYYS.
On approach to Kansas City Airport there’s
SPICY BARBQ TERKY SMOKE RIBBS.
Boston has two waypoints in support of their
sports teams, the KUBBS and BEARS.
Some waypoint names are more somber.
On the northern approach route to Washington
Regan National Airport, just miles away from
where a plane hit the Pentagon on 9/11, the
waypoints read WEEEE WLLLL NEVVR FORGT SEP11.
Since the North Atlantic Tracks change every
day, the MOTAM just gives entry and exit waypoints,
and then coordinates for the route in between.
Since the track coordinates are pre-programed
into the autopilot before take-off, there’s
no reason to name them as waypoints since
they won’t be given over radio.
In the case of this flight, we’re REQUESTING
track WHISKY and, more than likely, Gander
Control Center will give permission, although,
sometimes they’ll tell us to take a different
track, usually because we’re closer to another
plane than the minimum separation distance.
Since it’s much more difficult to know where
planes are over the North Atlantic, THEY’RE
required to be 15 minutes separated—about
140 miles—rather than the normal 5 miles
in areas with radar coverage.
Assuming we’re granted clearance, we’ll
head towards RAFIN waypoint and make sure
that our satellite communication systems are
working, then we’ll check to see if the
High Frequency Radio is working—a backup
in case other communications go down.
Minutes later, just after passing RAFIN waypoint,
the controller will say “radar services
terminated, have a good night,” and then
we’re on our own.
All the North Atlantic Tracks are preloaded
onto autopilot, so there’s nothing really
to do except wait.
When we we hit 30 west, we enter the Shanwick
airspace approaching Western Europe.
We switch our radios to Shanwick’s frequency,
then fly a few more hours to our Oceanic Exit
Point—GUNSO waypoint—meaning we’ve successfully
traversed the Northern Atlantic.
I hope you enjoyed this Wendover Productions
video!
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