Flying over Greenland

It's very normal. It's not that the plane's route curves to the north, rather the earth is shaped like an egg and the plane is taking the most direct route over the narrowest portion of the planet. If you check out www.flightradar24.com you can see the flight paths in action in real time.

No, it's quite typical that flights from the east coast of the US to Europe go over Greenland.

Sorry, but the Earth is not "egg-shaped". See en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Figureofthe_Earth, as an example. It is approximately an oblate spheroid or an oblate ellipsoid. The radius at the poles is about 6,357 km and the equatorial radius is about 6,378 km. That's a difference of only 21 km, or much less than 1%. A great circle route is simply shorter than flying "straight" across the pond at a constant latitude. Not because the North polar regions are somehow narrower than the South polar regions, or because the Earth bulges at the Equator by 21 km (which is only a few minutes at 500 mph). You can convince yourself of this with a standard spherical globe and a piece of string stretched between 2 points that are distant from each other. Also note that airlines may deviate from true great circle routes for a number of reasons including air traffic situations, weather, ETOPS requirements and even political considerations.

Or you can remember the old riddle about the guy who walked one mile south, one mile west, and one mile north, and found himself right back where he started, then he saw a bear. What color was the bear?

Flights between Seattle and Europe pass over Greenland, probably north of those to/from the eastern US. It's always fun to see when it's visible, including icebergs in the water. In recent years I think I've seen less ice and more land and water than 10-15 years ago, but my observations are far from scientific and of course global warming is only a theory -- isn't it?

So the bear was white, as in polar bear, as in being at the North Pole. Pretty stupid joke, especially now when the polar icecap disappears some summers.

As Dick says, planes flying from Seattle to Europe (at least to London) fly right over Greenland. It is nighttime going eastbound, so dark. The flight home is in the daytime, and if the sky is clear, seeing Greenland is a real treat. So beautiful.

But planes heading to the East Coast of the US should pass south of Greenland, unless they started way up north in Norway. Take a piece of string to a globe and younwill see what I mean. But sometimes a plane may divert to the north for weather-related reasons.

Were you right over Greenland, or off the coast but within sight?

Don't know whether it is fact or not, but we were told that airlines will go north to catch certain winds (or I guess I should say jet streams) that then help with fuel efficiency (translates into $savings) as they head into the US. That made sense to us, since otherwise a more direct route was possible (but maybe not with favorable winds).

If you ever get the chance, fly lower over Greenland...we did in a charter plane from Iceland as part of a National Geographic expedition, and it was (hard to find the word, but maybe) humbling. The world is so vast, and Greenland is so generally unpopulated for the most part. It was a really unique experience since previously on regular flights we could sometimes only see some white from way up high in the sky on typical flights back from Europe.

Coming back from Europe this year, after changing planes in Iceland on Icelandair, we flew over Greenland on our way to JFK. It was a treat to see.
From LA, we flew over the North Pole, or so the pilot announced, because when I looked out the window I didn't see Santa nor the red-n-white pole.

Pure geometry. The shortest distance between two points on a sphere is the great circle arc - the arc of a circle through the center of the sphere connecting the two points. That is what the airline try to stick to but something weather -- mostly the jet stream pattern when headed west - was force some deviation from flying the arc.

Transatlantic air space is relatively busy and largely outside of radar range so every day air traffic control offices in eastern Canada and Ireland get the flight list schedule and assign each flight to a specific ‘traffic lane’ in order to maintain safe and correct airplane spacing outside of radar range. And while ATC does it’s best to handle airline requests for certain transatlantic lanes for certain routes, there are some that may be sent slightly out of the way toward Greenland to meet demand for lane space among all those who request it

Here is a short and interesting video regarding air traffic lanes in the North Atlantic.
https://youtu.be/vBgulDeV2RU
It’s quite common for some of the westbound air traffic to be routed over Greenland.

DJ