All About Routing: Why Don’t Planes Fly In Straight Line Flight Paths?

The shortest distance between two points is a straight line, but flights rarely fly directly from the departure to the destination. As the distance between a city pair increases, flight paths become increasingly less-linear in a straight-line sense. Perhaps you’ve been a curious passenger checking out your flight’s path in the seatback inflight entertainment (IFE) screen or have noticed seemingly illogical flight paths between cities while browsing flight tracking websites. There are many reasons why flights don’t travel directly between airports, and this article will identify and explain some of the reasons why flight paths zig and zag enroute.