Radar Love Quiz | Aviation

Quiz Answer Key and Fun Facts

1. Looking at the contrails of an aircraft flying over my house, I was able to check its details on live flight radar and saw it was flight number DAL 162 from Minneapolis to Amsterdam. Who uses the DAL designation?

Answer: Delta Airlines

The aircraft was an Airbus 330-322 and was flying at 39,000 feet, so although I waved, I doubt anybody on board saw it.

That flight has a total 'great circle route' distance of 4,166 miles, with 523 left after passing over my hometown in Northern Ireland.

Founded in 1924, Delta has its headquarters at Atlanta, Georgia.

2. A Boeing 777 left fine contrails as it passed over my hometown. Live flight radar told me it was en-route from ORD to AUH. Where are those two cities?

Answer: Chicago and Abu Dhabi

The 'great circle route' distance between the two is 7,279 miles, with an average flight time of 12 hours and 53 minutes.

The particular plane was Eithad Airways Boeing 777 3FX(2ER).

Etihad became the second-largest airline in the United Arab Emirates. Founded in 2003, by 2019 it had a mixed fleet of Airbus and Boeing aircraft, including 10 Airbus 387s.

3. Passengers on KLM604 from Los Angeles to Amsterdam were probably having their breakfasts when it passed over my hometown in Northern Ireland. To the nearest half hour, how much time did they have to finish up before their scheduled landing?

Answer: Two hours

Based on live flight radar's great circle route information, the Boeing 777-206ER had already flown 5,098 miles and had 572 remaining.

Now, while individual flights may need to vary their routes and timings due to weather or air traffic control conditions, the theoretical 'great circle route' information is used in this quiz.

Opened in 1930, by 2019 Los Angeles International; (LAX) was the world's fourth busiest and the United States' second busiest airport, catering for more than 87 million passengers a year.

Although its runways were destroyed during WW2, by 2019 Amsterdam Schiphol Airport was handling 500,000 flight movements a year on its four runways - that included 72 million passengers.

4. As it passed over my hometown in Northern Ireland, Flight DLH 457 was already quite a distance from its take-off in Los Angeles. To the nearest 30 minutes, how long had it been airborne?

Answer: Eight hours and 30 minutes

The Lufthansa Boeing 747 830 from LAX to Frankfurt had another hour hour and 23 minutes left.

It had already covered 5,100 miles and had 741 to go.

Founded in 1926, Lufthansa became part of the Star Alliance group of international airlines. It was state-owned until 1994. The group carried 130m passengers in 2017, according to official figures.

5. Corsair flight CRL90 was enroute across the Atlantic from ORY to YUL when it passed over my hometown. The city it took off from and the one it was bound for shared a common official language. Which of these was it?

Answer: French

ORY is the IATA airport designation was Paris Orly, and YUL is Montreal.

The Airbus 330-343 was on a 'great circle route' flight of 3,441 minutes, with an average completion time of seven hours and four minutes.

Orly is the smaller of the two Paris international airports. It opened in 1932 and passenger numbers grew to 330 million by 2018.

Montr�al-Pierre Elliott Trudeau International Airport opened in 1941 and was catering for 19 million passengers a year in 2018.

6. Not all the flights that pass over my hometown in Northern Ireland are between destinations in North America and Europe. Royal Jordanian flight 46R is one of those. How many countries are on its 'great circle route' between Detroit and Amman?

Answer: 18

That 'great circle' route' is 6,055 miles and has an average flight time of 10 hours and 46 minutes.
It flies over the USA (naturally), Canada, Republic of Ireland, Northern Ireland, England, Holland, Belgium, Germany, Austria, Slovenia, Croatia, Boznia & Herzigvia, Serbia, Bulgaria, Turkey, Cyprus, and Israel to land in Jordan.

All this is based on theory. From time to time flights may need to divert and not pass over some of the shorter overheads, such as the Netherlands.

7. One old world to new world flight passing over Northern Ireland recently was UAL 963 from TXL to EWR. Which cities did it link?

Answer: Berlin and New York

TXL is Berlin Tegel Airport and EWR is Newark. I know that Newark is in New Jersey, but it is considered to be a New York airport. [See New York City Airports - NY.com ]

The 'great circle route' distance is 3,200 miles, with an average flight tom of six hours and 22 minutes.

Newark Liberty International Airport, to give its full name, is the sixth busiest US airport by international passenger numbers and is the busiest in the New York municipal area. In 2018, more than 46m passengers passed through Newark - some 30m of them on United (UAL).

Tegel, meanwhile, is the fourth busiest airport in Germany and handled 22m passengers in 2018.

8. Sitting outside reading a book ("Fallen Angel" by Chris Brookmyre - thoroughly recommended) I heard the sound of jet engines overhead my Northern Ireland home. Going to the live radar tracker on my computer, I noted it was flight THY81 from Istanbul to Boston. Tracking its route back, what island did I see it had already flown over?

Answer: Isle of Man

The lucky(?) people of the IOM get a lot of transatlantic jets overhead each day.

This particular Airbus 330-303 was on a 'great circle route' flight of 4,975 miles, with an expected journey time of nine hours and 54 minutes.

At the point it interrupted my reading, TC-JOE had a tad over six hours flying time remaining.

9. KLM Flight 17K left contrails on a cloudless sky as it flew over my hometown in Northern Ireland. If I had used binoculars, I could probably have seen what colours the plane was painted. What were they?

Answer: Blue and white

KLM Royal Dutch Airlines has been flying since 1919. The airline merged with Air France. Both are part of the SkyTeam alliance, which includes Delta in the USA.

The blue and white livery was introduced in 1974.

Schipol Airport in Amsterdam became KLM's main base. When this quiz was written in August 2019, KLM served 133 international destinations in 66 countries - including Washington DC, the destination for Flight 17K.

10. Not all of the aircraft that pass over my hometown in Northern Ireland show up on Live Flight Radar. Among these is a helicopter with tailfin designation G-PSNI. Who operates this airframe?

Answer: Police

G-PSNI is one of three helicopters available to the Police Service of Northern Ireland. Callsign Police 44 is a Eurocopter 135 that came into service in 2005 and was the first helicopter used by police in Northern Ireland. Before that they had relied on the Army Air Corps for aerial support.

Two other helicopters are used, slightly larger Eurocopter 145s - Police 45 and Police 46.

The PSNI also has access to two fixed-wing Britten-Norman Islander aeroplanes, Scout One and Scout Two.

Source: Author darksplash

This quiz was reviewed by FunTrivia editor stedman before going online.
Any errors found in FunTrivia content are routinely corrected through our feedback system.

Radar Love Trivia Quiz

The condensation trails of jet airliners against cloudless blue skies have emphasised the number of planes that fly over my hometown. This miscellany of questions is based on what I discovered from tracking them on live flight radar.

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