Pole to pole flight
« on: July 10, 2019, 05:08:54 AM »
Not sure that was already posted, there is a record breaking round the globe pole to pole flight going on right now. They use a Gulfstream G650ER ultra long-range jet.

https://www.onemoreorbit.com

They have a live feed too (still in the air as I type):

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC5QkzQGLF0r88u5KaH8DVJg/live

I found the flight path on flightaware:

https://flightaware.com/live/flight/QQE11/history/20190709/1332Z/KTTS
« Last Edit: July 10, 2019, 12:32:52 PM by Pete Svarrior »

Re: Pole to pole flight
« Reply #1 on: July 10, 2019, 09:15:12 PM »
At this moment, 31:42 hours after takeoff they are flying right over Antarctica.
They depart from Florida KSC, straight North, over Canada, flew the North Pole, flew South over Russia, Kazhakstan, Indian Ocean, Mauritius island directly to South Pole, are crossing it, fly North over a little west of Chile (South America) and directly to Florida KSC for landing.  The whole flight to this moment Long:58, Lat:-84.18, Alt:42900ft Speed:478.  The total flight will be 40172km. This flight from Indian Ocean over South Pole, few hours later ending up almost over Chile on East Pacific ocean is a killing, isn't it?

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Re: Pole to pole flight
« Reply #2 on: July 13, 2019, 01:37:52 PM »
Big leap of faith to call that a pole to pole flight . Viewing the flight track log shows the plane flies no farther north than 67 degrees before heading south .
       
Then we see the airplane on its southern leg heading to 24 degrees south - then a 12hour gap in the data - the plane is then heading  north from 55 degrees south .

The longitude is all wrong for a circumnavigation of the globe also.

Fair to say that this is nothing like a pole to pole flight . It's better described as a polar region to polar region circular ( loose term ) flight .

Re: Pole to pole flight
« Reply #3 on: July 15, 2019, 10:24:46 PM »
I can not find the flight patch track, where did you get it online?

Re: Pole to pole flight
« Reply #4 on: July 16, 2019, 07:41:34 AM »
I can not find the flight patch track, where did you get it online?

I saw it at the time on flightaware or one of those sites. I would love to see it plotted on a globe, or disk if you want. Please post if anybody finds one.

Re: Pole to pole flight
« Reply #5 on: July 16, 2019, 10:09:28 AM »
I can not find the flight patch track, where did you get it online?

I saw it at the time on flightaware or one of those sites. I would love to see it plotted on a globe, or disk if you want. Please post if anybody finds one.
If you go here https://uk.flightaware.com/live/flight/QQE11/history/20190709/1332Z/KTTS/UACC you can see a part of the track. There is also a link there to "View track log". Follow that and you get a "Google earth" button. If you click that you can download the data as a KML file and load it into Google Earth as a track.

I did this and downloaded the other parts of the flight as well - here's a series of screenshots. Note that there are quite significant gaps. There's nothing sinister in this, the data is from ADS-B and there are significant black spots in ADS-B coverage around the world. The flight logs will say "Gap in available data" in several places.



Re: Pole to pole flight
« Reply #6 on: July 16, 2019, 09:53:46 PM »
Big leap of faith to call that a pole to pole flight . Viewing the flight track log shows the plane flies no farther north than 67 degrees before heading south .

Feel free to plot those flight coordinates over Google Map wide open zoom seeing the spherical Earth, you will see that the gap below will go straight over the North Pole, the 61.7175 -80.9999 is north of Hudson Bay on Canada - Nortwestern Passages, and the 69.2901 708606 is right over Russia, the other side of North Pole, Yamalski District.  There is no other easy and faster way to go from one to another than a straight flight over the North Pole.  There may be several reasons why the tracking controle didn't log this less than 6 hours trip right over North Pole.

Ter 13:54:12   61.7175   -80.9999   
Gap in available data         
Ter 19:36:52   69.2901   70.8606   

The same for the South Pole, a 12 hours flight east from Madagaskar (Mauritius Island) to the southern tip of South America:

Qua 08:30:25   -24.2242   57.9559
Gap in available data         
Qua 20:52:16   -55.7884   -70.9529