VS019 LHR-SFO flightplan

[BayAreaLondoner]

My friend flew into SFO on VS019 today.
I checked Flightview for arrival information prior to leaving home and noticed that the routeing seemed to be much further north than typical. That is to say, they pretty much avoided overflight of the US and flew down the coast along Canada and then the Pacific northwest.

Apparently the captain said that this was an unusual route during his briefing but didn't expand upon that.
My friend and I were wondering if airlines are minimising overflight of US airspace.

Incidentally, I got some rather nice pictures (http://www.groovelicious.org/gallery/KSFO) as well if anyone is interested.

[Pax Vobiscum]

I'll post my thoughts while we're waiting for someone with more experience from inside the airline industry to pick it up ...

The jet stream is strongest around mid-latitudes, so it's not unknown for east-bound flights to take a more northerly routing to avoid a particularly active jet stream. I've certainly come into SFO from LHR more or less via SEA and I've even been GLA-JFK routing via Greenland and the 'frozen wastes' (the latter occasion was when the winds were exceptionally strong - our 767 needed two attempts to get on the ground at GLA).

There's a fun Great Circle Mapper (http://gc.kls2.com/) on the web, which gives a good idea of what the shortest route would be, but that's not always the most efficient for fuel optimisation.

[airchabum]

Hi there

I work Virgin's Operations dept. The routing you describe is entirely down to the winds on the day. Usually the flights will route along a line roughly Southern Greenland-Frobisher Bay-Calgary, but occasionally the winds mean the best routing is a few degrees further north.

Eastbound routings are fairly similar but for example tonight's SFO-LHR is routing Denver-Toronto-Gander with an average 80kt tailwind.

I hope that's of use to you.

Cheers

[BayAreaLondoner]

Thanks for the answers!