Details on Our Flight to China

As many of you know, my nephew Jeff is a pilot with the Air Force. He loves to fly and when he is off duty, enjoys tracking our flights whenever we fly anywhere. We sent him our flight info for China and he has reviewed our routes. I found all of this so interesting, even the really technical stuff, so thought I would share this here:

Jeff wrote:

"A quick check of recent routes reveals that you will most likely be flying over western Quebec, east of Baffin Bay, over the Polar icecap, near the north pole and down over central or eastern Russia and possibly through central or western Mongolia depending. The return routing looks almost the same. On the day of your travel, I will look up the route and let you know what you're doing if interested.

I took some pictures of Greenland on my last trip home. So you should take some pictures if you can of the pole and Russia. Most, if not all, of your trip should be during daylight hours.

Of interesting note is the challenge of keeping fuel from freezing during flight over the poles. The ambient temperature is about NEGATIVE 70F. The airplane will usually feel something around the -35 to -40 celsius due to skin friction, but polar temperatures will be even lower than that. Most nonpolar routings are not fuel temperature critical so it's usually just left to the book number temperature with a safety factor padded for the crew to avoid freezing the fuel. Since the polar routes are so cold, airlines have programs in place to go beyond the temperature of the fuel's book numbers.

A sample of your fuel will be analyzed at a fuel lab after you guys takeoff. The laboratory will message your crew with the actual freezing temperature of your fuel. During the flight the crew will manage fuel temperature with altitude and airspeed to keep it from freezing.

I'll be watching you guys on your flight. Incidentally, the 777 is my favorite airliner. I hope that they are still flying if I ever get an airline job and am senior enough to fly them.

Fly fast, fly safe."

Thank you, Jeff, for all this info and for watching over us as we head out on Wednesday morning!