Hello, dear reader! Welcome to another edition of Ask Giz, where we answer your questions submitted by readers from all over the tech, science and general nerd space.
If you want us to answer one of your questions, go to our Ask Giz submissions page.
Today’s question comes from Vanessa in Sydney. Vanessa wants to know:
“How do pilots get air time?”
Thanks for the question, Vanessa! Talking to my editor about this in the planning for this Ask Giz, I was quite intrigued by how the time was recovered during a flight back from New York. Traveling (despite some glitches) is a thing again, so I imagine it’s a curious question among many international travelers (of which, I’m not. The furthest I’ve flown is to Brisbane from Sydney).
So let’s go. Pilots: How do you do it?
How do pilots “earn” air time?
Getting air time isn’t really sci-fi or as nerdy as it might sound: it’s really the result of well-organized planning between planes and air traffic control.
Air traffic control is the airport team that controls… Air traffic. Like, they talk to the planes in the air and make sure things stay orderly in the airspace as the planes move from one point of interest to another.
Keep these benchmarks in mind. As in, say, a racing video game, planes must pass through these points of interest to traverse the airspace as directed by air traffic control, such as ordering traffic along with traffic lights.
But if you’re running a few minutes behind schedule, one of these points of interest may be removed, knocking a few minutes off your flight time. This would not normally be done, but if there was some kind of delay, such as wind slowdown or problems at the airport, air traffic control can remove a waypoint by talking to the pilot.
Here’s what Jim Cox, a retired airline pilot, told How Things Work:
“[Airline traffic control] has preferred to leave and go to the big cities. They require the routing to be the routing of the filed flight plan; depending on traffic, ATC may approve a request to shorten the flight path between navigation points.”
So that’s a little bit. Recovery time is usually something you’ll hear about on longer flights that experience delays, but shorter flights with fewer points of interest may be less likely to make the time.
No wormholes required
If you have a Gizmodo-type curiosity, we’d love to hear it.
Ask Giz is a bi-weekly series where we answer your questions, be they related to technology, science, gadgets, health or gaming. This is an engaged reader series where we rely on the Gizmodo Australia audience to submit questions. If you have a question for Giz, you can submit it here. Or check out the answer to our latest Ask Giz: Why Is My Poo Green?