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
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It´s a GREEN virgin!
Mankind can never benefit from an incremental number of virgins.
@DEEBEE That is only while the carbon credit exchange continues to exist. The one in the US is dead. The one in Europe is dying.
It’s amazing though what cognitive dissonance can do. Be it aliens from Clarion or AGW from CO2.
Best of the season to all. A time to take our personal inventory and understand how to be better people to the ones we love in the year to come. And Dr. Watts, many thanks for the time and effort of the blog. I want to even chuck a thank you to CTM, he deserves it too.
Virgins cooperate for a sustainable future without kids, as the Holy Agenda 21 commands. If necessary the Big Brother will provide well trained clones instead.
The analysis, by atmospheric scientists at Stanford University in Palo Alto, California, also shows that in the Arctic, aircraft vapour trails produced 15–20% of warming.”
http://pielkeclimatesci.wordpress.com/2009/12/23/yet-another-human-climate-warming-effect-in-the-arctic-aircraft-contrails/
I strongly suspect the effect is seasonal. Warming in winter/night. Cooling in summer/day.
So the winter effect is likely a higher percentage.
“contrails (as with any clouds) _only_ occur in layers of the atmosphere where the humidity is close to 100% or more”
Or more?
Lightrain says:
December 24, 2011 at 9:36 pm
“contrails (as with any clouds) _only_ occur in layers of the atmosphere where the humidity is close to 100% or more”
Or more?
Yes, and more. From about 96% and up. Above 100% is called supersaturation. Any hydroscopic nuclei from aircraft exhaust will cause almost instantaneous condensation of the moisture in the air.
This thread got me real curious, are there any other routs which go right over the Pole. (Fiji-London is close enough that it doesn’t make a difference.) I could not find any other route between cities which would have international service which came closer than 400 miles to the North Pole. The London to Fiji route is unique.
EO Peter says
Was under impression that Mount Erebus disaster put an end to “civilian” flight over Antartica due to the difficult and truly horrific conditions for those involved in the recovery operation.
———
There is a distinction to be made between low altitude tourism flights and high altitude transits.
Cargo and military flights have used the polar routes for a very long time. The problem is as mentioned earlier in the thread, that in case of trouble, you are a long way from any help. In winter it might be possible to put the plane down on the ice — maybe — but rescue would be would be a difficult situation. Any flight experiencing a major problem requiring an immediate emergency landing would likely be lost, in my personal opinion. There might be places along that route where the nearest airfield could be hours away. Rescue in the arctic is not like rescue in the Atlantic or Pacific (not that many of those are required). The major malfunctions that I can recall that would require such landings have all happened over land, to the best of my knowledge. I am thinking of issues such as United 232 where an engine failure resulted in severed hydraulic lines resulting in a loss of normal control of the aircraft.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Airlines_Flight_232
“Fiji straddles the 180-degree line of latitude”
Fiju must be in a different dimension of some sort. Is there a wormhole over teh North Pole that gets you there?
Some pictures of Earth taken by the NASA Apollo spring time missions include the sunlit arctic.
For example:
Apollo 10 view of the Earth 18/May/1969 Image #10075142
Apollo 10 view of the Earth 18/May/1969 Image #10075143
Apollo 13 view of the Earth April/1970 Image #10075511
“Sir Richard Branson, who has paired up with Al Gore in the past”….
Man I detest these elitist pigs. I now wish the worst for Branson’s ventures.
Having been in a 2 engine airliner that lost an engine (I had the seat right over the engine no less) I would not be wanting to do this.
Time to bring back the tri-motors!
JeremyR says:
December 25, 2011 at 4:40 pm
Having been in a 2 engine airliner that lost an engine (I had the seat right over the engine no less) I would not be wanting to do this.
—————————————————
I tend to agree with you Sir. When going long distances over water it’s four engine security for me.
Kindest Regards
Branson is an environmentalist wacko.
The arctic, as all environmentalist wackos know, must be protected at all costs.
Branson can save money on his business by flying over the arctic. To hell with Environmentalism. Business – profits first!
Branson gets what he wants. Environmentalist wackos look the other way.
John F. Hultquist says in part:
December 23, 2011 at 11:42 pm
“They must be flying these at about 7,000 feet:”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fairchild_Hiller_FH-227
These are turboprop passenger aircraft, and I have flown on similar turboprop aircraft, at much higher cruising altitudes altitudes around and over 20,000 feet. This particular one has a service ceiling of 28,000 feet. Meanwhile, the original post relates to 2-engine jet aircraft, which I have flown on at 27,000 and 29,000 feet cruising altitude.
Commercial flights like to fly near the tropopause, and if they can’t go that high then they like to fly as high as feasible. Thinner air usually means less drag and less fuel consumption for a given speed, and colder air usually means easier work for the compressor part of turboprop and turbojet engines.
david says:
December 24, 2011 at 1:21 am
“No one on the plane will comment about how much ice there is! In Winter it is pitch black up there. Nap, catch a movie and pass some long hours in the dark, that is all.”
In mid-March, it is a light dusk at the North Pole, while Arctic ice coverage is close to its annual maximum. After 3/21 and before 9/22, the sun is up 24 hours a day at the North Pole. In June and early July, the sun is up 24 hours a day everywhere north of about 70 degrees north, and there is usually ice most places more than about 75 degrees north then, even in the past few years.
crosspatch says:
December 25, 2011 at 3:20 am
=======
It seems any accident investigated by the NTSB (National Transportation Safety Board) can be retrieved here:
http://www.ntsb.gov/investigations/reports_aviation.html
(See 01/15/2009 on the above link for the 196 page PDF of the investigation of the airliner that ditched in the Hudson River ).
It shows the flight path, talks about pilots state of mind, weight of an average goose (that got sucked into the engines), engine core damage, flight crew performance, ditching airspeed, airspeed displays, and weather etc.
Or, this page:
http://www.ntsb.gov/investigations/reports.html
Enables you to;
Browse reports by:
Mode:
Aviation
Hazardous Materials
Highway
Marine
Pipeline
Railroad
You can read the summary or the full report (PDF).
>>TP says: December 24, 2011 at 1:29 pm
>>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.
The 737 is not certified to fly greater than 78 degrees north or south, whether on IRS or GNS. It costs money to fly over the poles, and there is no point spending this on short-haul SLUFs that will hopefully never go there.
.
So what’s new with this:
http://www.polerouter.de/frameset-story.htm
Philip Bradley says:
December 24, 2011 at 1:36 pm
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.
It is possible to have similar weather patterns but different humidity. It was the humidity that was not accounted for – the GOES satellites now show the atmospheric water vapor very clearly see http://www.ssd.noaa.gov/goes/east/natl/flash-wv.html
Contrailing will not take place in the low humidity areas and radiative heat loss through the dry air will be greater and lead to cooler temperatures.
Håkan B says:
December 26, 2011 at 5:53 am
So what’s new with this:
http://www.polerouter.de/frameset-story.htm
I checked out this link-despite the claim for over the pole the closest they got to the pole was when they were over the middle of Greenland, 1300 mi (2100km) from the pole. What I find interesting about the London-Fiji route it is the only commercial route directly over the north pole.
I was thinking about aircraft safety, then I got to thinking about the reams and reams of papers and hard documentation that goes to making the industry safe.
Then I got to thinking about what type of person/scientist we trust to produce this safety stuff (because they are doing an ok job)
Lastly
I got to thinking about what type of person/scientist I would NOT WANT producing this safety critical stuff.
yep you got it.
Well, the older routes are not representative of Arctic over-flights.
Instead look at Seattle/Vancouver BC to Germany, perhaps Beigin-London which IIRC is the route on which a 777’s fuel got too cold-soaied a few years ago.
The person who really needs to look out the window on his new route is Branson himeself.
Oops, that’s Bejing.
I’d also check flights that stop in Anchorage to refuel.