This will shave six hours off a flight from London to Fiji, which had to either stop in Los Angeles or Seoul en-route.
There’s a good side and a bad side to this.
The good side: Thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands of people traveling the Virgin Air (and other airlines) great circle route from London to Hawaii or Fiji will be able to see that the North polar ice cap has not melted away as some would believe have forecast.
The bad side: Sir Richard Branson, who has paired up with Al Gore in the past as a global eco champion, may take a hit from having planes spew jet exhaust in what some people call a highly sensitive region. I wonder if an EIR had to be filed for stratospheric effects? From The Independent:
Airlines cleared to use Santa’s short-cut
New destinations and shorter journey times on way after North Pole route is approved for passenger jets.
Hard-pressed airlines have been handed the perfect Christmas present: permission to fly twin-jet aircraft over the North Pole, saving millions on fuel costs, opening up new destinations and reducing damage to the environment.
…
Sir Richard Branson, president of Virgin Atlantic, told The Independent: “This new development really does open up a whole new world and will allow us to take our Dreamliners to more exciting and exotic places. Our new fleet of 787s could well be flying to Honolulu or even Fiji one day.” Fiji straddles the 180-degree line of latitude, and the most direct track passes directly over the North Pole – though because of the distance, over 10,000 miles, the payload would need to be restricted. The new policy could also make no-non-stop routes to Tahiti in the South Pacific and Anchorage in Alaska viable.
…
And Sir Richard Branson looked forward to new sightseeing opportunities: “Apart from the stunning destinations on arrival, the Arctic scenery will be just amazing on the way.”
================================================================
I look forward to all those tourist photos and video from the window seats saying;
“Gosh, look at all that ice, I thought the North Pole had melted according to the Guardian!”
Full story at The Independent
h/t to Dr. Ryan Maue
Addendum: Since some people haven’t clicked through the link to the article, they get the mistaken impression this is “new”. It’s only new for two engine jets, of which Branson has many. Four engine jets have been making great circle routes for years but two engine jets have been limited by ETOP rules related to an engine failing and distance to nearest airport. – Anthony
Discover more from Watts Up With That?
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
Santa Clause has been flying the polar route for centuries and no harm has come from it. Merry Christmas.
I have flown polar routes on the B747-400 for at least fifteen years. Our greatest concern was loss of pressurization or in-flight fire. There are ten hours of almost no suitable alternates. (Of course, anywhere on the ground is preferable to airborne when on fire).
I would hate to be out there in one of the “light twins”. Sooner or later there will be an unfortunate event.
B747-400 captain retired
Interesting. When Boeing got the 777 certified, the engines were certified to allow a new ruling from the FAA increasing ETOPS to 180 minutes. Just off the top of my head, it would seem that an engine shut down precisely over the North Pole would be very close to exceeding the 180 minute rule as I’m surmising that Barrow, AK would be the closest landing site.
Hey, no one has mentioned the GREENLAND leg. ICE has not really receded on Greenland either, that may be another interesting visual “find”.
The WUWT synopsis is misleading – this is only about certain new generation twinjets. The 4-jet planes could do this before.
Merry Christmas Anthony!
Do you think we could get Branson to reroute over Ann Schwab’s Forest Ranch mansion?
Hope your stocking is hanging heavy tomorrow morning – ta ta for now, Juanita
Mark Thomas says:
December 24, 2011 at 6:37 am
I heard it as “Everything Turns Or People Swim”. Regardless, flying on one engine over the North Pole to any landing facility is a scary proposition!
Great idea. I flew many times from Europe to the Fiji islands. Eleven hours to Seoul, some time to rest there, another eleven hours to Nadi, half an hour to Suva (who would want to stay in Nadi anyway?). It is a bit tiring, I know, but then, who would want to sit for sixteen hours in an aircraft flown by some exhausted pilot. Russians and Ukrainians tend to accept such conditions. The people at Heritage think it is normal, and encourage such behaviour. ( funny, I never thought that they were communists!). Test your luck!
Ed MacAulay says: December 24, 2011 at 5:43 am:
“So with more sonic booms traveling over the arctic, what will be the effect on polar bear sleep and reproduction?”
No problem Ed. We have offered any polar bear who complains in writing a free set of ear defenders.
Dad flew search and rescue for the RCAF many moons ago. On one occasion, they blew a motor over the north Atlantic. The crew were “pluckin’ the buttons from the seats” all the way home. 8^D
Best of the Season to all who frequent WUWT. A special thank you to Anthony, moderators and contributors. Cheers !
There’s precious little magnetic shielding so far north. The pilots and crew will have to wear dosimeters to measure accumulated radiation.
It is about time that planes were permiited to fly over the North pole. If this shortens flying time, it can only be a good thing, since less harmful pollutants will be emitted.
Ian W says: December 24, 2011 at 12:39 am:The 787 has just completed a fastest ever in class flight East around the world from Seattle in which one leg was Seattle to Dhakar, Bangladesh
Dhaka. Dhakar can be confused with Dakar, Senegal.
Heathrow-Fiji via North Pole? MILLIONS will queue for this flight..
Olen says: December 24, 2011 at 7:12 am: Santa Clause has been flying the polar route for centuries and no harm has come from it. Merry Christmas.
Multiple reindeers. One dies out, the other 19 keep on. Merry Christmas to everybody.
I still spit blood over Branson. One of his snotty nosed little brats was on UK tele this year to tell us all that we must change the way we live to save the planet. Then jumped on his dad’s aeroplane to fly off the their private Caribbean island. a$$0
polistra says:
December 24, 2011 at 5:08 am
Persistent contrails are not always narrow. Under the right conditions they widen into actual clouds. If Branson’s polar flights are fairly frequent, the Arctic could end up almost entirely covered with clouds, at times when it wouldn’t have been cloudy without the jets.
As I stated in my previous post, persistent contrails in a super-saturated atmospheric layer can create cirrus and several will smear together. However, it should be noted that to do this the atmosphere was already supersaturated with the water vapor one of the more powerful ‘green house gases’ so will already have been absorbing CO2. However, it will not have been raising the albedo and cirrus definitely does that – see:
Pete in Cumbria UK says:
December 24, 2011 at 5:19 am
Contrails devastate the output of PV solar panels and even when the trails are all ‘smeared out’ and, at first glance skywards have dispersed, their effect is noticeable to the tune of 30 to 40% reduction in PV output.
So Pete has noted the large albedo effect preventing energy from reaching the surface. Observational science.
Now the other point is that the poles normally are where there is continual descending dry air- it is part of the Earth’s atmospheric circulation so there tends to be less contrailing over the poles. Moreover, jet aircraft have been flying over the poles for more than 50 years there are regular polar routes. Many of these aircraft were early generation aircraft with far less efficient engines – yet the poles have not been noted for persistent contrails.
“Sir Richard Branson … may take a hit from having planes spew jet exhaust in what some people call a highly sensitive region.”
——————————————-
Maybe he could earn Polar Credits by making extra ice cubes.
Beardy One is over the North Pole when suddenly, one of the engines explodes.
The chief engineer tells the pilot that they have to lose half the cargo. So the pilot orders the co-pilot to get half the passengers to jump, ‘do it alphabetically’
so the co pilot gets the rear door open and announces – ‘I want all the
Anthropogenic Global warmists
Believers in models
Catastrophic doom sayers
Delegates to IPCC beanfeasts
to make their way to the back of the plane and JUMP’
Mike Mann looks at Al Gore and says ‘Shoot Al, thats us’
Al looks at Mike and says
‘Not today Mike. Today we are Yamal experts’
EO
polistra says:
Persistent contrails are not always narrow. Under the right conditions they widen into actual clouds. If Branson’s polar flights are fairly frequent, the Arctic could end up almost entirely covered with clouds, at times when it wouldn’t have been cloudy without the jets.
*****************
If a jet makes a persistent contrail in the dark and there is no one there to not see it, can it still interfere with the solar gain that is not happening?
Polar flying was not that common because you need upgraded navigation equipment to do it. Magnetic navigation is hopeless, and most IRSs (INSs) are restricted to not more than 78 degrees north. GNS (satnav) has made things much easier nowadays.
“Richard G says:
December 23, 2011 at 11:20 pm
How about a route over the south pole to NZ?”
I just did some measuring on Google Earth and all the locations on Earth to which a flight from London would be shorter flying over the South Pole are located more than 400 miles south of the southernmost point in New Zealand. The only possibly commercially viable route that I could find that comes even close to the South Pole would be from Sao Paulo, Brazil to Adelaide, Australia. But since for more than half of the journey there is no divert other than the destination I don’t think that this route is even allowed for four engined jets.
Ralph, you have it (sort of) backwards. GPS coverage is practically non-existent above 84N. The aircraft reverts to IRS as the primary source of navigation. There is no restriction on IRS NAV in Polar Regions. My 747-400 is required to dispatch with all 3 IRSs operational, and I need 2 to complete the segment in Polar Regions (78N and higher). Also, we don’t use magnetic navigation. We use grid nav, which the Flight Management Computer and IRSs can handle just fine. Most 747s were not equipped with GPS prior to around 2000 – 2002. Polar region flying was a daily operation long, long before that. There will be more polar flying in coming years, but traffic is increasing on ALL international routes. That’s simply the nature of global economic growth. In short, the only new thing pointed out in this article is the regulatory authorities allowing ETOPS for longer segments.
As I think of it….
All those jets flying over the pole could intentionally drop special loads of that famous “Blue Ice” that comes off the plane from time to time…
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_ice_%28aircraft%29
After a few years, this could pile up into “”one “honey” of an anthropogenic glacier”.
I get flushed just thinking of the potential.
Put that cold air at altitude to good use.
Happy Holidays.
The much quoted NASA Langley paper on temperatures after 9/11 when no aircraft were flying claimed a temperature drop due to no contrails and the flying ban – yet did not account for the dome of high-pressure and very dry air over the eastern USA in the days they measured (remember how clear the sky was in the reports of 9/11).
I just threw the contrail issue out for discussion. As wikipedia says there are ‘large uncertainties’, which is climate-speak for ‘we don’t know’.
A study of contrails over England in WWII found the opposite effect, cooling from contrails.
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=contrails-aviation-affects-climate
BTW, the NASA study did account for the weather over those days by comparing with similar weather patterns for those dates, and still found cooling from the contrail absence.