by Devesh Agarwal
VT-ANN, L/N 90 C/N 36285, the latest Boeing 787-8 Dreamliner of national carrier Air India arrived in to New Delhi’s Indira Gandhi International (IGI) airport yesterday.
VT-ANN AIC164 flight track. Courtesy FlightAware. Deviations from flight plan route are normally due to weather or ATC. |
The aircraft was flown 14 hours 12 minutes, non-stop from Paine Field in Washington state, USA, to Delhi, a distance of over 7,200 nautical miles (about 13,350 km) as Air India flight 164.
The green line shows the actual flight track and the blue dotted line represents the flight plan route. Deviations are normally carried out to avoid bad weather or to take advantage of good weather like tail winds, and also to try and minimise the number of countries the flight flies over. Deviations are also performed on the instructions of air traffic control, they are, after all, the masters of their airspace.
Airlines have to pay over-flight and navigation charges to each country whose air-space they fly in. It appears Air India minimised the charges by flying from the United States, through Canada, Greenland, Norway, Sweden, Finland, Russia, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Afghanistan, Pakistan to India.
View the flight track and details here.