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I'm a student of geography and always try to get a window seat when I fly so I can gauge my approximate location.
I normally fly out of Sacramento for business and vacations. I've noted, whenever I fly southeast, that the plane typically heads to a specific point-usually around the south shore of Lake Tahoe, then angles depending on the destination. For example, it turns right to parallel the California-Nevada state line to go toward Las Vegas and Phoenix or Tucson. There must be a reason the airlines don't fly directly to their destination-which would be the shorter route-and instead opt to take an "angled" route. I've noted it on many returns as well, though its usually a different "point to point" route that overtops Quartzite AZ and Edwards AFB before coming up the east side of the San Joaquin Valley over Bakersfield, Fresno, etc.
Anyone know where those route maps might be online that I can print and then follow along from my window seat?
The southwest area of the US is riddled with restricted (no-fly) areas causing a patchwork of areas planes can't fly. This causes the zig-zag you mention.
With all the government and military (including defense contracting) different areas are closed depending on what is being shot off and where/to and what is flying where/to. Aircraft will need to travel around those restrictions causing different flight paths from time to time.
Last edited by PacificFlights; 12-18-2009 at 11:28 AM..
There really is no such think as a standardized route map.
Routes change all the time based on government no-fly zones, also you have individual towers that will route an airline based on traffic, etc, within a few hundred miles of the take-off and landing areas, and sometimes in between, and you have different routes that the pilot (or the pilots computer) picks due to weather and wind factors, etc. You have different country fly-over tarrifs (for int'l trips) that may deter a flight from flying over a country from airline to airline....too many variables to mention.
As already stated there is no set route map due to all the factors already mentioned. But here is the information that pilots at Sacramento Airport use to help determine their route: AirNav: KSAC - Sacramento Executive Airport .
That's the executive airport he's probably on a commercial flight out of their international airport which is the departure procedure I linked to.
Exactly-Sacramento International. Thanks for the info!
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