Being that I worked for Pan American before they went belly up and travelled to Japan many times, maybe I can make this simple.
Long distance flights are generally flown over an arc because as Cakes began to explain the Earth is widest in the middle and flying directly East or West just makes the trip incur more mileage.
For example, when I flew to Japan from JFK, the flight left New York and began heading NorthWest through Canada and Alaska and kept going to almost Russian airspace before heading South to Tokyo. Flight lasts 13 hours non-stop and if flown across the latitude line of NYC, the same flight would have lasted a few hours more because of the longer distance across at our lattitude. Just imagine an explorer at the North Pole. He walks in a tight circle around that pole, he literally crosses all the worlds time zones in a few steps, continuing South towards home it takes more and more time to complete the circle.
Hope that helps Chris.
Omar, nice read, hopefully they'll give you more in the future. I thought you were actually going to reveal some pearl of a road not often travelled so we mortals could ride it.
Ken
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1998 Valkyrie cruiser
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