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Login. Please try again.  not a member? sign-up now!   Great
Circles  Published: Feb 17, 2002  In the March, 2002 Unicom, a
reader asked why a flight from Honolulu to Houston went far
enough north to pass just south of Los Angeles. The reader, who
obviously didn't understand great circles, speculated the flight
was routed to avoid Mexican airspace. However, the reply, which
explained about great circle routes, was incomplete.  A few
years ago, I was transferred to Germany, and the day before our
flight I took my kids to a library to show them where we would
be flying. I used a globe and string stretched from Chicago to
Frankfurt to show the actual shortest path, then showed them in
an atlas that the same path appears curved on a flat map. So
when they saw us passing near Greenland on the in-flight
display, they understood what was happening.  Trying the same
trick between Honolulu and Houston yields a surprise. While the
great circle does indeed