How do flight routes look?

You must have caught a plane. Particularly on long-haul flights, for instance between Europe and the United States, routes do not follow a straight line, but rather a curve. The question is, why would the aircraft fly over Greenland rather than flying directly from point A to point B? I’ll explain it to you.

Why are airplane routes curved?

The answer, as with so many other things happening around us, is mathematics and physics. If you drew two dots on a sheet of paper, the shortest way to go from one to the other would be a straight line, but on a sphere things are a little different. And because the Earth is not flat, the curvature of the Earth becomes an incredibly significant factor in flight trajectories.

The circumference of the Earth is much farther around the equator than at higher or lower latitudes towards the poles. Not only will making a turn save the plane a lot of time, but also fuel. Because the Earth rotates on its own axis, it forces the equator to "lean out" and be wider. This curve path has a name and is "orthodromy".

Flight paths are mapped before take-off, depending on the shortest and most efficient route, but may change during the journey depending on weather, wind or jets.