International Journal of Aviation, Aeronautics, and Aerospace Volume 4 Issue 1 Article 2 1-1-2017 Long and short-range air navigation on spherical Earth Nihad E. Daidzic AAR Aerospace Consulting, LLC,
[email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://commons.erau.edu/ijaaa Part of the Aviation Commons, Geometry and Topology Commons, Navigation, Guidance, Control and Dynamics Commons, Numerical Analysis and Computation Commons, and the Programming Languages and Compilers Commons Scholarly Commons Citation Daidzic, N. E. (2017). Long and short-range air navigation on spherical Earth. International Journal of Aviation, Aeronautics, and Aerospace, 4(1). https://doi.org/10.15394/ijaaa.2017.1160 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Journals at Scholarly Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in International Journal of Aviation, Aeronautics, and Aerospace by an authorized administrator of Scholarly Commons. For more information, please contact
[email protected]. Daidzic: Air navigation on spherical Earth As the long-range and ultra-long range non-stop commercial flights slowly turn into reality, the accurate characterization and optimization of flight trajectories becomes even more essential. An airplane flying non-stop between two antipodal points on spherical Earth along the Great Circle (GC) route is covering distance of about 10,800 NM (20,000 km) over-the-ground. Taking into consideration winds (Daidzic, 2014; Daidzic; 2016a) and the flight level (FL), the required air range may exceed 12,500 NM for antipodal ultra-long flights. No civilian or military airplane today (without inflight refueling capability) is capable of such ranges.