Originally Posted by pdx1M

Watching the map Monday on 857 it seemed we had a rather odd flight track from SFO to PVG and I wondered if any of the board pilots fly that route and might know why. Suppose it could be winds - the most obvious case - but seemed strange. The minor oddness was that we actually crossed north of Anchorage rather than down along the coast but the part that had me scratching my head was that we flew down through China west of North Korea passing directly over Beijing and then approaching Shanghai from the west. The typical routing has one fly down the length of Japan and fly over Tokyo. We actually sort of backtracked to get back out to Shanghai with this path. We were on time or a bit early so perhaps just really strange winds but I fly this route a lot and don't recall ever seeing this approach.

Another interesting tidbit from the flight - I was sitting in first class and had former President Bush across the aisle from me. Very pleasant to chat with. I suppose this should go in the UA celeb thread. Even with all my flying I don't normally notice celebs on board but this one was impossible to miss.