A cold dusk is setting in in Moscow as we pre-flight the aircraft for our non-stop flight to Los Angeles. Slowly thawing our frosty aircraft back life on the ramp, we have more than just the usual transatlantic flight preparations to go over. Our objective today is a little different… The shortest path, and our planned routing, between sub-zero Moscow and mild LA is (as the picture above illustrates) to fly ‘over the top’. I.e. fly at or near to the north pole.
Whilst these routes are profitable and becoming more widely used, flying near to the poles or within areas of ‘magnetic unreliability’ is not without its hazards. Perhaps most obvious to the layman, are the deadly freezing temperatures on