Why Planes Don't Fly Like Birds!

Why don’t aircraft take a direct route to their destinations instead of criss-crossing the skies? The reasons are based on sound logic, explains Ashwini Phadnis

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Have you ever wondered why, when talking about the shortest distance between two places, we say, “X km as the crow flies”? Why don’t we say as the plane flies because, after, all both the crow and the plane fly?

The answer is simple. Birds like crows fly straight while planes do not. Ask any pilot why this is so and pat come the answers: “Because birds are smarter” or “birds don’t have engines that can fail”.

But jokes apart, there are many reasons why planes don’t fly following a straight path, some of which are scientific, though all of them are serious for the safety of flights — and covering the longest distance in the shortest possible time for flyers’ convenience and airlines’ bottom lines.

According to Captain PP Singh, Senior Vice-President, JetLite, perhaps the most important reason why planes do not fly straight is wind patterns. “As we fly for the least possible time and not the shortest distance, just like google map does these days for road trips,” wind patterns make a difference, he explains.

Among the other reasons cited by Captain Singh are following a route structure which meets Air Traffic Control (ATC) requirements which is not necessarily a straight line, and airspace availability, as thousands of planes crisscross international skies every hour.