# Flights over the North Pole **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [April 14, 2007, 11:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/flights-over-the-north-pole/400087 "2007-04-14T11:53:29Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 15\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![excessaintrebellion](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/76d3ee/32.png) [@excessaintrebellion](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/excessaintrebellion)\ **Post date:** [April 14, 2007, 11:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/flights-over-the-north-pole/400087/1 "2007-04-14T11:53:29Z")
Do airplanes fly over the North Pole? If not, why? Such a flight path, it seems to me, could shorten many long trips. ---
**Author:** ![Garfield226](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/9e8a1a/32.png) [@Garfield226](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Garfield226)\ **Post date:** [April 14, 2007, 12:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/flights-over-the-north-pole/400087/2 "2007-04-14T12:03:19Z")
The shortest path between two points on a globe is known as a great circle route. You can try out a bunch for yourself [here](http://gc.kls2.com/). Depending on how close to the north pole you’re wanting, there aren’t that many that go through it. The closest I could come in a few attempts was [Denver, Colorado to Bombay, India](http://gc.kls2.com/cgi-bin/gc?MAP-STYLE=&MARKER-STYLE=default&PATH=DEN-BOM&PATH-COLOR=red&PATH-STYLE=&PATH-UNITS=nm&RANGE=&RANGE-COLOR=navy&RANGE-STYLE=best&SPEED-GROUND=&SPEED-UNITS=kts), and my guess is not too many flights go nonstop Denver to Bombay. ---
**Author:** ![Fear\_Itself](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fear_itself/32/19637_2.png) [@Fear\_Itself](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fear_Itself)\ **Post date:** [April 14, 2007, 12:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/flights-over-the-north-pole/400087/3 "2007-04-14T12:33:49Z")
Prior to the end of the Cold War, there were political implications as nations were wary of aircraft approaching from the poles. [Since 2000, polar flights have been increasing](http://www.cbc.ca/news/story/2000/06/19/polar000619.html) as international cooperation has reduced tensions about atomic armed bombers using that route. ---
**Author:** ![ElvisL1ves](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/5daacb/32.png) [@ElvisL1ves](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ElvisL1ves)\ **Post date:** [April 14, 2007, 3:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/flights-over-the-north-pole/400087/4 "2007-04-14T15:20:25Z")
Continental’s and Cathay Pacific’s flights between New York / Newark and Hong Kong use the polar route. It’s only become practical recently, with the advent of ultra-long-range airplanes and the opening of Siberian airspace to the West. The long distance between usable airports up there is still a deterrent, though. It used to be that the most direct flights from Europe to eastern Asia would involve refueling in Anchorage - if you lived there, you could get a great flight almost anywhere in the world, as long as you didn’t mind departing at 3 AM or so. That is no longer true, but ANC is still a huge hub facility for FedEx. ---
**Author:** ![Johnny\_L.A](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johnny_l.a/32/1084_2.png) [@Johnny\_L.A](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johnny_L.A)\ **Post date:** [April 14, 2007, 3:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/flights-over-the-north-pole/400087/5 "2007-04-14T15:23:12Z")
_Polar route, destination: Oblivion ‘Can I take that little box that you’re sitting on, sir?’ 'No, that’s all right, Miss. I’ll hold it right here ‘I’ll need it later on when I’m up in the air.’ And one false move will give it all away…_ ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [April 14, 2007, 3:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/flights-over-the-north-pole/400087/6 "2007-04-14T15:42:15Z")
You’re also asking for trouble if you fly over the north pole and anything goes wrong. That puts you a long, long way from help. ---
**Author:** ![Critical\_Mass](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/f1d935/32.png) [@Critical\_Mass](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Critical_Mass)\ **Post date:** [April 14, 2007, 5:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/flights-over-the-north-pole/400087/7 "2007-04-14T17:01:23Z")
Improvements to Russia and China’s air traffic services and navigation systems (as well as the advent of GPS as a primary method of aviation navigation) were some of the key considerations in development of polar flight routes in the late 90s. ---
**Author:** ![Duckster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/duckster/32/1244_2.png) [@Duckster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Duckster)\ **Post date:** [April 14, 2007, 5:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/flights-over-the-north-pole/400087/8 "2007-04-14T17:09:13Z")
[QUOTE=Exapno Mapcase] You’re also asking for trouble if you fly over the north pole and anything goes wrong. That puts you a long, long way from help. [/QUOTE] The same could be said for Pacific routes. ---
**Author:** ![panache45](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/panache45/32/64_2.png) [@panache45](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/panache45)\ **Post date:** [April 15, 2007, 4:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/flights-over-the-north-pole/400087/9 "2007-04-15T04:37:15Z")
Honolulu to Warsaw comes close. ---
**Author:** ![Shamozzle](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/9f8e36/32.png) [@Shamozzle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shamozzle)\ **Post date:** [April 15, 2007, 7:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/flights-over-the-north-pole/400087/10 "2007-04-15T07:11:22Z")
Are you all familiar with the real-time 3D [flight tracking](http://www.fboweb.com/antest/ge/intro.aspx?old=1) available in Google Earth? Very cool. ---
**Author:** ![picunurse](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/7bcc69/32.png) [@picunurse](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/picunurse)\ **Post date:** [April 15, 2007, 9:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/flights-over-the-north-pole/400087/11 "2007-04-15T09:24:50Z")
I don’t know how close we came to the actual pole, but I took a flight from Seattle to Amsterdam that flew the polar route. We saw 9 hours of white. ---
**Author:** ![DSYoungEsq](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/c6cbf5/32.png) [@DSYoungEsq](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DSYoungEsq)\ **Post date:** [April 15, 2007, 1:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/flights-over-the-north-pole/400087/12 "2007-04-15T13:01:21Z")
The actual North Pole (90° N Latitude) will only be on a great circle flight path if the starting city and the ending city are on reciprocal longitudes. That is, the longitude of the starting city and the longitude of the ending city, added together, equal 180°. Lines of longitude are great circles which intersect the poles. For example, New York City is at 74° West Longitude. For a great circle from NYC to cross the exact pole, the city of destination would have to be at 106° East Longitude. Singapore (103° 51´) would be damn close. Hanoi is almost spot on (105° 51´). However, I have my suspicions that the PRC isn’t allowing American flights to cross their airspace, forcing an altered flight path for flights from JFK to those two cities. ---
**Author:** ![chorpler](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chorpler/32/2888_2.png) [@chorpler](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/chorpler)\ **Post date:** [April 16, 2007, 12:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/flights-over-the-north-pole/400087/13 "2007-04-16T00:58:00Z")
On last week’s episode of _House_, this was a plot point – people were getting sick with a mysterious disease and they were going from … maybe Hong Kong? … to New Jersey, and Cuddy kept mentioning that they should have turned back because now they were over the North Pole and there was nowhere to land and no help available if they did. ---
**Author:** ![MikeS](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/919ad9/32.png) [@MikeS](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MikeS)\ **Post date:** [April 16, 2007, 2:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/flights-over-the-north-pole/400087/14 "2007-04-16T02:26:45Z")
[QUOTE=chorpler] On last week’s episode of _House_, this was a plot point – people were getting sick with a mysterious disease and they were going from … maybe Hong Kong? … to New Jersey… [/QUOTE] Singapore, actually, which ties in to **DSYoungEsq** ’s post. Singapore Airlines actually does operate a non-stop flight from Singapore to Newark (Flights 21 & 22); the scheduled duration is about 18.5 hours from Newark to Singapore and about 19.5 hours on the way back. I’m not sure how far they deviate from the great-circle route, though. ---
**Author:** ![Shamozzle](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/9f8e36/32.png) [@Shamozzle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shamozzle)\ **Post date:** [April 16, 2007, 2:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/flights-over-the-north-pole/400087/15 "2007-04-16T02:52:12Z")
Google Earth is really handy for checking great-circle routes quickly. One simply has to use the “Tools --\> Ruler” tool to create a line between the points of interest. The line will wrap halfway around the world if your points are sufficiently distant from one another.