Originally Posted by
Chinatrvl
I strongly assume that distance is based in actual distance travelled - just like flight and train prices - and not on the shortest distance on the 'great circle'.
I must admit that
jiejie's counterexample flummoxed me. While I won't completely discount your "distance flown" hypothesis, that flies in the face of all conventional practices.
My guess is that a low level employee of CAAC (or whatever it's called these days) made a mistake (i.e. it wouldn't surprise me if that person had a stack of 1,000+ routes to review and simply eyeballed it because he was getting tired) a few years back and misreported the distance between CSX and NNG.
I will try to follow up on this the next time I meet my well-connected aviation guy in Beijing... primarily for the benefit of our curiosity, but all the better if we can save CSX-NNG travelers a buck or two.