I did this just for fun. The thread seemed to not be going anywhere as it is.
The Sydney to Los Angeles airline route is quite well known. An aircraft departing from Sydney flies NE, S of New Caledonia, close to Fiji, N of Christmas Island (Line Islands), SE of Hawaii and on towards Los Angeles.
On a Mercator projection map, the flight path looks like this:
Nothing too interesting. That's how flight paths projected onto a flat map usually look.
On a globe, if you draw a straight line from Sydney to Los Angeles, you get this:
It's not very accurate to do it on a flat image of a round globe, but nevertheless the line pretty much follows the flight path described above.
I've tried plotting the same path on a distinct continent FE map.
The most accurate map of Earth we have.
I believe I've correctly located Fiji and Hawaii (two major island chains, easily found on any map of the Pacific). Christmas Island or Kiritimati, another point roughly around the route was more difficult to place on the map, the map being relatively low-res. However it should be somewhere in the left circle. It's (supposedly) a bit N of the equator, at 157 degrees W.
The funny thing is that the Gilbert Islands are located on the other side of the Earth, straddling the equator at (supposedly) 173 degrees E. Why is this funny? Because the Gilbert Islands and Kiritimati are both part of the Republic of Kiribati. Conventional geography indicates the two are supposed to be about 3000km apart. You'd imagine the Kiribatian government would notice their islands are actually on opposite sides of the Earth.While I'm at it, here's another thing. Air Pacific operates flights from Honolulu to Kiritimati using Boeing 737 aircraft. They claim the distance is 2151km and the flight time is 2hrs 58mins. This fits rather nicely with a 737's maximum cruising speed of around 800km/h (it depends on variant). Just looking at the distinct continent FE map, the distance from Honolulu, Hawaii to Kiritimati should be much greater than the 2151km claim; it should be about the same distance as Los Angeles to Paris. A distance no 737 can can cover in 3 hours. But I digress.Anyone is welcome to better plot the route aircraft take from Sydney to LAX, particularly if they have access to a higher res version of the map, with all Pacific Islands clearly marked. Still, I believe the gist of it won't change. These pilots and navigators flying the Sydney to LAX route must be morons. The airlines must be run by morons too. No pilot, no airline has noticed they're flying in a big loop around the edge of the Earth. No one has noticed that it's much shorter to fly from Sydney towards Africa, across the Atlantic, over North America and to Los Angeles. Despite using inertial navigation, radio beacons and other instruments which would show they're practically flying a half-circle.
Or they do know, but they choose to rip-off their passengers by overcharging them for the wasted fuel and time. And no one has ever spoken about this. Not even a laid off airline employee with a grudge against his former employer. This is big, someone should alert the media!
