Hopping Over The World

I always go for a window seat, and on this recent Cathay Pacific Boeing 777 flight, I was glad that I did. We took off at 9 am from JFK airport in New York, bound for Hong Kong – the other side of the world. It was close to zero degrees outside. I could see that the plane was hugging the coastline, which puzzled me as I thought we’d be crossing the American continent on our way to the Pacific Ocean. I switched to the flight map on the console in front of me. To my astonishment I realised that we were heading north towards the North Pole! Read here why.

At this point, the flight attendant insisted that all window blinds were to be kept closed, but I kept peeping. I was fascinated to see the icy countryside, rivers and lakes below me. We crossed over the frozen St. Lawrence River and the rest of Canada, then Greenland, passing over the Arctic Circle to the east of the North Pole. The flight map identified the land marks on the plane’s flight path. By now it was pitch black outside, despite my watch telling me that it was early afternoon.

We crossed over the top of the world and traveled along the north coast of Russia, then south across Mongolia and China. When it was daylight again, many hours later, I could clearly see a barren expanse of land with occasional frozen rivers. There was no sign of human habitation. I checked the flight map again and learned that we were flying over the Gobi Desert. We eventually landed in Hong Kong after more than fifteen hours of flying time, and twelve hours time difference.

On the return journey a few weeks later, I was excited see what route we would take. I remember learning about Great Circles in geography class at school. This is the shortest distance between two points on the globe, though it does not appear so in the traditional flat world map. Now that Russia has opened up its air space to commercial jets, this is the most economical and fastest route between certain points on Earth. Of course, the route would be affected by the rotation of the earth beneath us.

As before, we headed north out of Hong Kong. However, the intense clouds beneath us prevented us from having a great view. The flight map showed when we crossed over Taiwan and Japan and The International Date Line. We then hugged the Alaskan coastline, crossed through Canada, traversing Lake Michigan, before arriving in New York, after sixteen and a half hours of flying. I saw an early nightfall as before, followed by a dawn and soon after, another nightfall.

The last meal we had on the plane was an omelette breakfast. While in transit, waiting for our connecting flight back to Trinidad, I decided to eat something and observed that the eating places in the departure lounge were now setting up. “They’re not setting up,” my friend said, “They’re closing up!”. My body clock was telling me that it was mid-morning but it was, in fact, late in the evening. That is extreme jet lag!