orbitmic

I know that there is already a thread on the impact of the closure of Russian airspace on flight times but it seems mostly about people worrying about timetable changes due to the extra flight length. However, I thought it would be worth creating a new thread on the current use of the Polar Route for (the hopefully many of) us who, as aviation lovers and geography geeks just think of the Polar route as a wonderful thing to experience.

Well, that certainly was my case just flying ICN-HEL via the Polar route. The past few days, Westbound flights had instead used the Southern route (via China, skirting the Himalaya, Central Asia, the Caucasus, the South of the Black Sea, Budapest and then turning sharp North towards Helsinki) so my hopes were low, but when I was told we were "doing" the polar route, I was as excited as a 5 year old.

For those who haven't had the pleasure yet but share my excitement, the idea is that you go from Northeast Asia (in this case Seoul) to Northern Europe (in this case Helsinki) not by flying West as would seem logical but by going Northeast. You fly over Japan and along the Kamtchatka peninsula and in the middle of the Behring straight, embracing the East of Russia to your left and the West of Alaska to your right. You then make a straight line towards the North pole and then head over the Spitzbergen, north of Norway and Lappland before landing in Helsinki. The route is full of quirks. For instance:

- You travel 17 time zones, many of which within a few minutes of each other (as time zones are ultra narrow near the poles), and including the International Date Line,
- As you head nearly straight north, and given the shape of the earth, you fly over parallels at extreme speeds - approximately 1 degree in 7 minutes around the 82nd parallel, even less when you are around 88-90 degrees,
- You cross from night to day to night again during a flight which leaves at 11pm and arrives at 5am at least in this season (it might be different at other times of year since there is no daylight in much of that part of the world around the winter solstice and conversely no night near the summer solstice),
- This also gives you a chance to enjoy some of the desolate landscapes of the Arctic ocean (though I suspect much of the cabin hated me for looking out in the middle of the night!),
- This is obviously not guaranteed, but in our case, we also saw some Aurora Borealis (Northern lights) on the way as an added treat!

Finnair give you a North pole certificate, but to be honest I won't need that to remember this flight. As someone who loves planes, loves flying loves geography and travel, this was simply an exceptional treat and one I enjoyed thoroughly, and hopefully, at least some of you here will relate to my excitement or have had a chance to share it and I thought that this could be a nice thread in which to share our exciting experiences...

intuition

I hope you got a certificate, signed by the captain. 5 year olds actually do need it to remember the happening!

cantongirl

Wow, very informative post. I didn't know the polar route is this unique. Many of my AY Japan flights took the polar routes, unfortunately I slept all of them at the time passing the polar. I got many copies of that certificate thoigh....Knowing about the possibility of seeing the aurora, I would have made an effort to stay awake.

But a friend immediate reaction for me flying polar is that I got exposed a lot more in cosmic radiation 😂

a_k

Are they still giving the certificate? I flew the polar route in the summer and never heard any rumblings on board about it...

ReiskaJohnson

I flew the polar route from HND to HEL a couple of weeks ago and received the certificate. Slept almost the whole time, but still pretty cool!

orbitmic

Yes, the certificate is still provided! The Captain didn't bother to sign though.

I suspect I was the only person excited or possibly even aware we were taking the polar route alongside my travel partner whom I contaminated with my excitement! The English language announcement did not mention the route (I sadly do not understand Finnish), so it is only when I asked the purser who had kindly come to introduce himself about the routing that I knew about the route. There was similarly no announcement at the time of passing the Pole (nor should there be of course as most of the cabin was rightly asleep!), so I think that from that point of view, it's nice that the people who were oblivious to that little adventure could still get the certificate to feel they were part of it anyway!

fransknorge

I flew it in October (not AY though) and was really excited too, I wake up in the middle just to spend time at the window looking, I bothered the crew to get update about our position (the moving map stopped working during that time of the flight and the Wifi could not work either). If they were accurate, this picture is taken exactly at the North Pole, during "the middle of the night" (we also experienced day time for a flight leaving 11 PM and landing at 5 AM).

EuropeanPete

I'd love to do the Northern route one day and Northern Lights would be the cherry on the top - I've been on 5-6 Northern Lights seeing type places/ experiences and never yet seen them. Sadly, we went the Southern route on my December HEL-HND flight and my more frequent HEL-BKK routing is always going to go south.

orbitmic

I have to say that this part really took me by surprise, especially given that we are still well into winter and this was quite far north. I really hadn't expected it!

PS: Internet not working for us either, but the moving map was, interestingly.

PPS: I also took a pic exactly at the North Pole! I won't post it because you can see absolutely nothing on mine, but it's one of those cases where I'd argue that me knowing that i took it right at the North Pole holds more meaning to me than a decent image without the personal ownership of it! If I'm entirely honest, the landscapes around the arctic are repetitive and I suspect many people would find them a bit dull.

orbitmic

My understanding from talking to the pilot is that the Polar route is in fact more frequently used in the Asia-Europe direction than in the Europe-Asia one, I believe due to the winds (wind typically blows from West to East in the Northern hemisphere, so by doing the polar route to Asia/outbound, you end up getting headwind as opposed to the tailwind it would have been with other itineraries. By contrast, on the inbound/from Asia you gain tailwind instead of headwind.

EuropeanPete

Makes sense - I often go back to Europe via Hong Kong or Doha. Will have to make an effort to take Finnair next time and hope the winds are in my favour.

orbitmic

indeed! A week ago there were a few polar itineraries, then a few days before my flight it was all southern route, and it’s only for our flight we returned to polar scenario!

btw I think what’s so counter intuitive is that we all know about ideals routes changing a bit depending on wind, but in this case you switch between two radically different scenarios with no (authorised) in between!

Agent69

How close to the North pole do you get?

Courmisch

If I recall correctly, somebody posted a screenshot of FR24 on this forum a year or two ago. It showed the flight to Narita and Haneda leaving at almost the same time on the same day from HEL leaving in opposite directions: one toward the pole and the other toward the Baltics.

ReiskaJohnson

I checked this for my flight afterwards with Google Earth, we were about 22km from the North Pole.