Amazing Technology

This is Saturday, Nov. 30.  Today Mike is flying home from the UK after doing two weeks work in Aberdeen on North Sea oil business for Talisman.

So this morning I googled flightradar24.com to check on his progress.  He had phoned on Thursday (along with several texts from Greenwich in London that he was flying out Saturday morning.  I didn't have his flight number, but knew it was an Air Canada flight to Calgary.

For those of you not familiar with Flightradar24 it is a live visual representation of each airplane flight in the world.  As you look at it as if from space, there are hundreds and hundreds of airplanes on the globe over Europe and North America.  As you put your cursor on each one a window pops up telling you the airline and flight number.  I figured he was leaving sometime in the late morning English time so I checked in around 8am this morning our time.  I zeroed in on the UK and touched each airplane in the air.  I found AC851 just off the coast of Ireland.  I checked the detail and it was headed for Calgary via Greenland, Baffin Island and north of Hudson's Bay over the Northwest Passage.

It is now afternoon and I have just checked in again and he is at 63 deg. north Latitude and -79 deg. Longitude flying at 440 kt. (1.2 x 440 = 528 miles per hour) over northern Hudson's Bay.  That makes him about 60 x 20 deg. = 1200 nautical miles north of us and flying at 34,000 feet in a Boeing 767-333..

If you want detail just ask and you find the plane flying from LHR (Heathrow) to YYC (Calgary) with the STD (scheduled time of departure) at 12:05 GMT) and an ATD (actual time of departure) at 12:16 GMT (Greenwich Mean Time) and STA (scheduled time of arrival) at 2:30 MST (Mountain Standard Time) with an ETA (Estimated Time of Arrival) of 2:52 pm MST.

As I have commented on this blog previously I find it phenomenal that Mike has texted me from a train travelling from Barcelona to Zurich at 300 kilometres per hour.  It is just as incredible that we can track a plane anywhere in the world in real time from home.

For you non-sailor/pilots out there the distance north was calculated as follows:

From the equator to the north pole (at any point on the equator) is 5400 nautical miles or a quarter of the distance around the earth.  That same distance is represented by 90 deg. latitude as there are 360 deg. around the earth.   If you divided 90 deg into 5400 NM you get 60 miles per degree.  Mike's plane was at 63 deg.N and we are at 43 deg.N; so he is 20 degrees further north then we are.  20 deg. x 60 NM = 1200 nautical miles north of us.  With 1.2 statute miles in a nautical mile we have him at 1440 miles north of us.

I am now humiliated as Mike was not on that plane.  I texted him after the plane landed in Calgary, but didn't get a response until three hours later from Vancouver.  He made the trip via another plane and was waiting for a plane to Calgary.