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A diagram illustrating great-circle distance (drawn in red) between two points on a sphere, P and Q. Two antipodal points, u and v are also shown. The great-circle distance, orthodromic distance, or spherical distance is the distance between two points on a sphere, measured along the great-circle arc between them. This arc is the shortest path ...
The actual flight length is the length of the track flown across the ground in practice, which is usually longer than the ideal great-circle and is influenced by a number of factors such as the need to avoid bad weather, wind direction and speed, fuel economy, navigational restrictions and other requirements.
Great-circle navigation or orthodromic navigation (related to orthodromic course; from Ancient Greek ορθός (orthós) 'right angle' and δρόμος (drómos) 'path') is the practice of navigating a vessel (a ship or aircraft) along a great circle.
Its arc length is the great-circle distance between the points (the intrinsic distance on a sphere), and is proportional to the measure of the central angle formed by the two points and the center of the sphere. A great circle is the largest circle that can be drawn on any given sphere. Any diameter of any great circle coincides with a diameter ...
The most common standard flight length measurement is by great-circle distance, a formula that calculates the shortest distance across the curvature of the earth for two airports' ARPs. [5] It is the only measurement that is constant on a given city-pair route and unaffected by operational variances. [ 6 ]
Routing efficiency may be defined as the great-circle distance divided by the actual route distance = Off-nominal temperatures may be accounted for with a temperature efficiency factor η temp {\displaystyle \eta _{\text{temp}}} (e.g. 99% at 10 deg C above International Standard Atmosphere (ISA) temperature).
(East-west paths form a circle in both disk and spherical geometry.) It is possible in this model to traverse the North Pole, but it would not be possible to perform a circumnavigation that includes the South Pole (which it posits does not exist). The Arctic Circle is roughly 16,000 km (9,900 mi) long, as is the Antarctic Circle. [23]
The great circle route over the North Pole is 13,000 km (7,000 nmi), or 5 + 1 ⁄ 2 hours less flying time at a typical cruising speed. Some old maps in the Mercator projection have grids composed of lines of latitude and longitude but also show rhumb lines which are oriented directly towards north, at a right angle from the north, or at some ...