There are two types of flights from China to the United States, direct flights and connecting flights. Depending on the departure and arrival cities, direct flights usually take more than ten hours. A connecting flight will take more than twenty hours.
We all know that a straight line between two points is the shortest, so why don't Chinese airplanes flying to the United States go in a straight line and take a detour through the Bering Strait? We all know that the Pacific Ocean separates China from the United States, so wouldn't it be closer to go straight through the Pacific? In fact, there are reasons why airlines do this, mainly for the following 3 reasons.
First, the main reason is that this route is the shortest, "the shortest route"? Immediately came the controversy, how can it be? The map is clearly a curve, not the shortest straight line between two points? Editor, you've got it wrong! In fact, no, the principle is very simple, we look at the map is a plan view, is the Earth's profile, and the Earth itself is a sphere, the shortest distance between two points of the sphere should be used to make the distance between these two points to the center of the earth as a plane, in the spherical surface of the formation of curved lines is the shortest distance from the straight line we look at on the map is very different, words do not say much, directly look at the map will be able to understand.
Second, downwind flight, learn high school geography should know in the flight to the United States on this route belongs to the westerly wind belt, in the subtropical high pressure zone and the sub-polar low pressure zone, the specific principles will not explain, the aircraft downwind flight than upwind flight not only reduces the amount of fuel consumed to arrive in the United States time is also much shorter, both to save fuel can also shorten the time we may find that the aircraft The return time from the United States to New York is significantly more than an hour, this is because the plane did not return to the original way, flying against the wind time-consuming and fuel-consuming, so the plane chose to go around a larger circle, is to avoid flying against the wind.
Third, flight safety, we all know that there is no land in the Pacific Ocean, although there are many small islands, but most have not been developed, and no country is willing to spend a huge amount of money to build an airport, there is a long stretch of no one inhabited places, the plane if a long time in the where to fly suddenly out of the problem of the no airport to land in the sea, coupled with the complexity of the situation, a lot of emergencies is man-made unpredictable, the aircraft The chances of an accident are higher, due to the distance from the land is also not conducive to rescue.