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The North Pole


The blue dotted line is a 40 NM circle around the North Pole. The next waypoint is 89 degrees North and 80 degrees West.

The ETP is the Equi-Time Point between the two closest airports, Keflavic in Iceland and Sondrestrom in Greenland. For any emergency diversion before the ETP it will be faster to go to Keflavic.

.84 in magenta at the next waypoint denotes that the Oceanic Clearance has specified that the aircraft must maintain a set speed for the duration of the crossing.

The compass ring is moving constantly at this stage, with zero degrees pointing at the North Pole. In seventeen minutes or so it will be abeam us.

Ahead and to the left is a green blob, indicating moisture in the form of a cloud. This is probably incorrect, since the weather-producing atmosphere at the north pole is very shallow, so there's not much weather to affect aircraft. More likely, the radar beam has been turned-down so that it is producing ground-return at the furthermost point, 160 nautical miles (320 kms) away.





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The images from the speech: "From an A380 cockpit"
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