For example, if I were in Tangier, Morocco, and wanted to fly to Whangarei, New Zealand (the antipode on the globe) – wouldn’t it be about the same time to go up instead of across?
ETA: Thanks so much for the detailed explanations!
For those who are wondering why I picked Tangier/Whangarei, it was just a hypothetical! The-Minmus-Derp explained it perfectly: *Whangarei and Tangier airports are antipodes to the point that the runways OVERLAP in that way – if you stand on the right part if the Tangier runway, you are exactly opposite a part of the Whangarei runway, making it the farthest possible flight.*
In: 2270
It depends, if you are in the northern hemisphere you may take ‘the great circle route’:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polar_route](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polar_route)
In theory, you could do a southern polar route, but no one seems to want to. The answers about needing to be x hours away from an airport are incorrect; a southern polar route would be in range of appropriate ETOPS 370 diversions provided the route doesn’t take you directly over the south pole. Antarctica is massive (it is 1.5 times the size of the continental US) so you could clip it and be legal.
ETOPS 370 stands for extended twin operating standard (or ‘engines turn or passengers swim’) 370 minutes. That is, the plane must be able to fly for 370 minutes on one engine. Turbines (the type of engine on almost every commercial aircraft) very rarely fail. ETOPS 370 is available on the Airbus A350. ETOPS 330 is available on the 777-ER. The Boeing 747 and the Airbus A380 and A340 do not need to comply with ETOPS. So, in theory, there are a few planes that could do a southern polar route.
Latest Answers