Travel musings

[ellarien]

Why does it take such a long time to get to China from the Western US? As the crow flies, it looks to be almost the same distance as
to the UK, and a non-stop flight can do that in under twelve hours, but it looks as though, say, SFO--Beijing is about 18 hours, which doesn't make much sense to me. (I am aware that planes are not crows, but it still doesn't look right.)

Also, fie upon confusing conference websites!

EDIT: OK, it looks as though I underestimated the time difference. It's 15 hours, so 27 hours clock time would be a twelve-hour flight,
which is about right. (Modulo silliness like AA wanting to go Tucson-Dallas-LAX one day and then leave for Beijing the following day.)

Comments

[rilina.livejournal.com]

That sounds odd to me too; direct flights from NYC to Seoul (going west) are about 13-14 hours.

[ellarien]

I'm not completely convinced that the flights I'm finding aren't going east. Either that, or they're stopping in some unspecified place on the way.

[ellarien]

Never mind. A bit more googling revealed that I was guessing wrong about the time difference, so it actually works out at about 12 hours.