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What standard for calculation of miles/distance?

What standard for calculation of miles/distance?

Old Jun 12th, 2006, 05:39 AM
  #21  
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Again: I understand that airlines give you only what they're going to give you, and it would be stupid to think they use anything but some established, on-the-books, in-house number for every and all flights between the same two airports. You don't get miles based on how many miles THAT DAY you actually flew -- there isn't a cockpit frequent-flyer-mile-o-meter that clocks the miles to be awarded for that particular flight!

What led to my last speculation, however, was drawing an analogy -- flawed, of course -- to their posted flight times, in which they add a cushion to allow for some statistical average number of minutes' delay in approach or taxiing. And then they probably fudge it to make their "on-time" stats look better. But it's THEIR CALL -- I get that!

The whole question is a silly rumination, of course. Occurred to me on the same day I clocked a local parking meter at 30 min. to my digital watch's 26 min.

Once again: I get it -- and always did -- that airlines give you the miles they choose to give you. No appeal. No review. No argument. No question. No wiggle room. OK, all?
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Old Jun 12th, 2006, 12:12 PM
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Ok. Your recent speculation is similar to one thing I considered. They could compute the mileage buy using the distances between naviagation waypoints.

But the info that AAFF gives convinces me that some/many carriers are computing a great circle arc, the shortest distance between two points on the surface of a sphere. The UA value for TPA-ORD is the same as AA and the Great Circle Mapper tool.
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