The geek in me fell in love with the flight information display on the Emirates flights.
The standard display that I’ve seen shows a plane perched precariously on a flattened world map (or sometimes a globe), slowly making its way from its origin to the destination. The map zooms in every now and then to reveal a closer look at the country we’re flying over and sometimes, only sometimes, displays the name of a nearby body of water. The other constant feature of all such displays is the pedestrian, line item display of information such as time to destination, altitude, ground speed, head wind, the time at the origin and destination. After a while, the only information that you care about is the time to destination, especially on a interminable flight.
The display on Emirates airlines flight instead shows a more finely etched map with a little more information such as the names of some prominent cities or land mass that we’re passing over or that is coming up. The topography displayed is also much finer than the normal ones, showing mountains, lakes and other water bodies. The display switches perspectives showing the plane’s trajectory across a curved globe instead of just the common flat looking, traditional world map display. Another interesting variation is a cockpit view of the flight. A compass showing the direction of the flight is displayed too. The usual information about speed, distance etc. is of course also shown.
When we’re taxiing on the runway, instead of showing the distance to destination and time to destination as plain, boring lists of numbers, the Emirates version shows an animation with the plane following the flight path to the destination, with the flight duration and distance to destination counters ticking up as the plane travels, and ending with the plane reaching the destination. So, for example I remember that around 4000 kms we pass Moscow to our left, that around 9000 kms, we pass Svalbard, a Norweigan archipelago in the Arctic Ocean and that around 12000 kms we pass Edmonton in Candian Alberta, that we pass Boise on our right as we descend into California, approaching San Francisco from the east. As the plane curves around the Earth, it feels as if its been slingshot from the other side. Here is a video that shows what I’m talking about (wait till the end please).
The coolest feature of all this however is the access to the onboard cameras that display the front view and the underside view. Watching the plane taxi its way to the takeoff runway, the ground blur by as the plan speeds up and takes off is like sitting in the pilot’s seat. It delighted the child in me. The view of the takeoff (and landing) is especially beautiful during night as the plan follows the lit runway. Once the plane takes off, switching the view to the camera on the underside of the plane shows the ground rapidly disappearing as the plane ascends. For folks sitting in the mid section seats or away from windows, the underside view gives a decent view of what we’re flying over (in the absence of cloud cover): the city lights, the barren desert of the middle east, the snowy peaks, the icy beauty of the Arctic, the lakes and well demarcated fields over pastoral land.
Why Are International Flights To/From India Always Late Night ?
Why oh why are international flights in and out of India always at the witching hour (and in the case of Emirates flight, even ghosts and witches are probably warmly ensconced in bed) ? In every other country, the flight takes off and arrives at more godly hours. Googling the question, I found that the main reason was the bilateral agreements signed by India with the various airlines. Historically, those agreements apparently focused on the frequency of flights, the number of seats, and the destination cities. The airlines took advantage of this to make flight arrivals and departures late because of multiple reasons, again some historical, such as:
- Travel to India was not a high volume business and using late night arrivals and departures allowed better utilization of aircraft and crew
- Business travelers to Europe and South East Asia like to leave late enough to make the flight a red eye into their destination, allowing them to use the entire day. And business travelers make the bulk of international travel, I think.
- Air traffic control immaturity that had difficulty dealing with significant air traffic. At night, domestic travel drops off steeply allowing the ATC to deal with only international flights.
- Many commercial airlines also carry freight and a late departure allows for carrying even late shipments.
- Leaving at night allows for transit passengers to catch the first wave of flights from the hubs in Europe and Singapore to the various parts of the world.
- Concerns about the heat and fuel loads as the international flights are huge planes with significant fuel.
Interestingly, I came across an article from the Indian daily, The Times of India, that said that the Indian aviation ministry is now insisting on decent departure and arrival times from these international airlines. The article is dated May 2008 and apparently quite a few of the flights to South East Asian countries have started changing their flights to arrive and depart at decent hours. The ones to the US don’t seem to have changed much, however.
The Horrible Flight Home
So, we’re back in the US, after almost six weeks in India (five for Shanthala). This was undoubtedly the worst flight I’ve ever taken. The plane takes off from Bangalore at the ungodly hour of 4:15 am! This translated directly to no sleep at all the entire night, and combined with the short flight duration to Dubai, we landed in Dubai thoroughly exhausted, and overwhelmed with the prospect of a 16 hour flight ahead of us.
You’d imagine that they’d feed you more on a 16 hour flight, but they do not. They serve a meal soon after take off and the next meal is only a couple of hours before you land. This meant no food for about 10 hours or so. The quality of the food was not worth the plastic platter it was served on. The lack of sleep and the despairing quality of the food meant combined to unleash a demonic headache in me, the likes of which I haven’t experienced in a long time. To add to the miserable experience, except for two people, the crew was quite unfriendly too.
Shanthala and I were very tired. She wondered how I had made the journey alone with Maya. The answer was sitting right with us. Maya was a mostly undemanding, easy traveler, screaming her frustration at being straitjacketed only a few times. As I nursed my headache, feeling like I wanted to puke, she was mostly patient with me. Towards the end, when she was probably in total ennui, she took to passing time by examining the gaps her toes and commenting how much dirt there was between them.
We landed in San Francisco amidst gray, overcast skies. The clouds mirrored my mixed feelings, confused feelings, about leaving India and coming back. Feelings that switched between luxuriating in the order, silence and cleanliness of the US and despondent that this was sterile, empty, lonely. Or wondering if the overbearing, hot, noisy, dusty, overcrowded, power cut, battery backed, water shortaged, Sintex water tank topped, half dug, road congested life that I thought was Bangalore was instead warm, tropical, socially rich and friendly. Where to stay, what to leave ?
Emirates plane photo courtesy of flickr, by Andy_Mitchell_UK.
Youtube video, courtesy cswanek.
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