A crusty old captain once asked me why on an out-and-back two leg flight with strong winds, it takes more total time than the same flight in calm winds.
As an aside, I was playing with Foreflight and I was looking at flying from Toronto to Buffalo following the lake shore (basically a C shape with 1 leg longer than the other). Outbound wind was calculated to average 12 knots headwind. Return was average 2 knots tail wind. Same altitude, same route.
As an experiment, I plotted direct from airport to airport, and I got 16 knots headwind on the way out, 10 knots tail wind on the way back.
I'm so confused.
