Offline 3DGeek

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Airliner cruise speeds - and why they matter.
« on: August 29, 2017, 11:13:06 AM »
In numerous other threads, RE'ers like myself point out that airline-quoted flight distances are WILDLY different from those measured on various FET maps.

This should come as no surprise - it's a fact of geometry and topology that you can't "flatten" a sphere without distorting the distances and angles across it.

Clearly there is a discrepency between RET distances and FET distances.

Let's give this a name - to save typing in future:

frD - Flat/Round Distance ratio.  Defined as "The ratio between an FET distance and an RET distance between two particular points on the Earth's surface."

Using the unipolar map the frD between Sydney Australia and Santiago Chile is around 2.1 and on the bipolar map it's around 3.0.

This is not a small number!

Let's define some more terms:

trT - Flat/Round Time ratio.  Defined as "The ratio between an FET 'on-time' flight time and an RET 'on-time' flight time between two cities."

Flight times are measured using clocks - those times are verified by the millions of people who fly every single day.  There are about 100,000 airline flights every day.  Many organizations check what percentage of planes arrive on time - and break that down by route and by airline - and it's true beyond reasonable doubt that over 80% of flights arrive on time - and that number rises to around 90% for "good" airlines.

That means that ftT is 1.0...quoted airline flight times are correct statements of how long the plane takes to get there (barring delays) whether the Earth is round or flat.

So here is a third term:

frS - Flat/Round Speed ratio.  Defined as "The ratio between the speed an FET airliner must fly to achieve mostly on-time flights to that same speed in RET between two particular points on the Earth's surface."

Basic algebra says that:

frD / frT = frS

...and because we agree that frT is 1.0, we can simplify that to:

frD = frS

...in other words:  The discrepancy between FET and RET distances is equal to the mysterious discrepancy between the speed that Tim Bishop thinks airlines fly and the speeds that the airlines and aircraft manufacturers THINK they fly.

OK - so the error in the airplane speeds has to match the discrepancy between FET and RET maps.

But hold on one cotton-picking-minute here!!!

The frD for Sydney-Santiago  is 2.1 or 3.0 (depending on which map you choose)...but the frD between cities in the USA is almost 1.0...same deal in Europe.

WTF?

If the frD varies between flights across continental USA and flights from Australia to Chile - then the frS must vary by the same amount.

What this means is:

Whatever error there was in calculating the speed of a particular airliner was is DIFFERENT in different routes.

In fact, since many individual aircraft fly 'triangular' routes between three or even more cities, the error in the calculation of that individual airplane's speed would have to vary depending on where it's flying.

Here is an example:  Qantas also fly that same airplane on the Sydney-Aukland route.

The RET distance given by Qantas is 2,162km...and (using the unipolar map) - the FET distance is around 3,000km.   So the frD (and therefore the frS) is only around 1.4.   So why does the 747-400 fly at only 60% as fast over that route.

More significantly:

Isn't it an AMAZING coincidence that the speeds of airliners vary in PRECISELY such a way as to make it seem like the route distances match a round earth - when in fact the earth is flat?

Did airline manufacturers manufacture engines and aerodynamics to exactly make it look like the world is round when it's really not?

And it's not just that they could have fudged the air speed indicators and installed software to fake the throttle responses to do that.   Airplanes handle VERY differently when flown at cruise speed and at half cruise speeds.

There is simply no way you could hide all of that fakery.

So...what's going on here Mr Bishop?

Do enlighten us.
Hey Tom:  What path do the photons take from the physical location of the sun to my eye at sunset?