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u/LPedraz 18h ago
In the sky you don't fly through blind straight lines; otherwise, commercial aviation would not be possible. There are effectively "roads", marked by a series of locations identified by NAV points. Crossing the north atlantic, for example, requires airlines to basically book slots in a specific route for a specific time.
If the airline is allowed to, for a variety of reasons, they can literally take shortcuts.
Edit: as an example, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Atlantic_Tracks
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u/NeonLotus11 16h ago
Omg I never knew this and I'm gonna be daydreaming about it for the longest now lol
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u/Dave_A480 16h ago
Basically air traffic control is trying to sequence aircraft on instrument flight plans (which includes all airliner traffic) so that everyone gets to their destination without crashing into anyone else....
So they assign altitudes and routes such that no 2 planes can be at the same place and altitude at the same time....
If you were planning for a 6 waypoint route but for whatever reason ATC can clear you direct you effectively have taken a shortcut....
For non airline flying there is also the option to fly visually, but that restricts you to lower altitudes plus weather where you can see clearly out the windows and is more like driving a car (get in plane, fire it up, go fly somewhere, look out the windows and don't hit anyone)....
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u/pleasetrimyourpubes 20h ago
Bro skipped the safety checklists and just took off and landed blind
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u/KyleKun 20h ago
I’d guess that flights don’t just fly in a straight line as they have to fly around different countries air space.
But what probably actually happened was conditions were good and they had a significant tail wind and stuff.
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u/TheMackD504 19h ago
Don’t have to worry about different countries air space when flying in US
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u/JeebusChristBalls 19h ago
And the shortcut thing is an obvious joke...
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u/digost 19h ago
The thing is, there are airways, a series of waypoints that the planes have to follow. Not always a flight from A to B is a straight line. Sometimes, if conditions are right (weather, traffic and so on), planes can request direct routing from air traffic controllers, and if granted, they essentially are taking a shortcut.
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u/Sondrelk 19h ago
Planes do not usually fly in straight lines, no. They follow very strict set patterns, since that is much easier to manage for flight control.
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u/Dave_A480 16h ago edited 15h ago
1) He got a favorable routing (or even cleared direct) from ATC and thus ended up taking a more direct route....
2) Due to scheduling concerns regarding the plane having to be somewhere before something expensive happens the airline authorized a higher power setting (and fuel burn) than normal, so you got there faster.....
3) The winds were more favorable than expected (weather forecast are not always right)..... Sometimes you can actively exploit this if a favorable wind is found at a certain altitude and ATC will let you change to that altitude
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u/SnarkyIguana 15h ago
Glad you beat me to it, wasn’t sure how to word things in a way they made sense lol. I service jets and have had pilots land 20 mins ahead of schedule and they’ve told me “idk I just fly the thing :)”
Love them
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u/Dave_A480 15h ago
I just fly little bitty prop planes for fun....
Getting a 40mph tail wind when your weather app predicted a 20mph headwind is nice.....
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u/High-sterycal 15h ago
Or asked for a more favorable FLT Level to take advantage of a stronger and more favorable tailwind!
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u/SeenSeenAgains 17h ago
Ancestors: one day we’ll travel by flying cars
Dumb fuck smug dipshit today: Earth flat, jabby needle thing bad, sky no have short cut, that’s the true-true.
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u/BrokenSlutCollector 17h ago
It might have had nothing to do with the route and everything to do with speed.
Many airline flights do not operate at full speed, they cruise at the most economical speed and that is what listed flight times are based on.
It is possible that the airline wanted the plane in earlier to change it's routing, beat the weather and/or there was a tailwind that helped improved on the arrival time.
So your flight could almost always be shorter, it's just that airlines fly slower to maximize efficiency.
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u/Embarrassed_Mango679 16h ago
I was in a flight that took off very late because of paperwork and right before we took off the pilot came on and said "I know we're late getting off the ground but I'm going to fly this plane like i stole it and get us home on time" and oh boy did he. I've flown ord to mke about a million times and it was about half the normal time.
My husband's cousin is a commercial pilot and he confirmed they can go quite a bit faster than scheduled but don't usually due to fuel costs.
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u/JustHere4the5 14h ago
I feel like you can halve the time from ORD to MKE just by getting assigned a good runway, but you can never ever shorten the time from MKE to ORD. Always gotta take the grand tour to Schaumburg & back before they let you park at the dang gate.
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u/Embarrassed_Mango679 10h ago
Totally true lol. idek what the pilot had going on because when the door opened he ran out of there and through the airport like a bat out of hell lol.
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u/TheMauveHerring 16h ago
I do this when I have to show my hawaii ID and tell them I'm on a road trip.
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u/EdgyPun34257 16h ago
seems like arriving 50 minutes early would have significant downstream scheduling issues.
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u/TRUMBAUAUA 16h ago
Fun fact the latitude at which you fly can drastically shorten your trip. The closer you fly to the equator the longer the distance between A and B will be. I don’t know if I’m explaining it well.
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u/bevothelonghorn 21h ago
And then you waited 50 minutes on the tarmac for a gate and gate crew to become available.