Hi,

I recently flew round trip transpacific a month ago and discovered that the flight path were completely different from one another. On the outbound SFO-HKG (CX 879), our journey after takeoff from SFO took us through northern california coast, through deep into inland Alaska flying above near Mt. Mckinley, through the Bering Strait, through Eastern Siberia, then going southwest through Hokkaido/Japan, through Taiwan and then into HKG. We left SFO more or less on time but arrived into HK almost 1 hour behind schedule. Don't know if this flight path played the role?

On the return HKG-SFO (CX 872) we flew a basic across-the-pacific path. The only land we flew above was Taiwan and the remainder was above-ocean all the way until we began descending into SFO. For this flight, we ended up arriving 45 minutes ahead of shedule.

So why is it so northerly on the outbound and then a relatively straight southerly on the return?