When returning from holiday, one starts to think of holidays

[fivemack]

By 'south of the Rio Grande', I mean 'into Mexico' rather than 'anywhere south of 31N' - I thought this was standard usage, but various of my friends in Cambridge interpreted it the other way.

[Poll #1545665]

Comments

[crazyscot.livejournal.com]

Does transiently crossing either circle in an aircraft count?

[fivemack.livejournal.com]

No; cross them with the deliberate intent of being on the other side.

Are there any routes that transiently cross the Antarctic circle? JNB to SCL still seems to be across the southern Atlantic.

[tau-iota-mu-c.livejournal.com]

Astronomers regularly cross the antarctic circle to fly australia to chile via auckland.

[fivemack.livejournal.com]

Ah yes, that's wide enough for the dip down to get far enough south ... I was thinking that Antarctica was so big, and the bottoms of Australia, Africa and South America so nicely laid out in thirds, that there wasn't a route that went right over the Antarctic continent.

[gnimmel.livejournal.com]

There are also regulations that limit how far South you can fly - aircraft have to remain within some amount of flight time from an airport that they can land at in case of engine failure/medical emergency/etc., and Antarctica doesn't have airports (aside from ice runways which specially-equipped planes can land on, AFAICR). The trouble is that the Southern oceans are also not very well equipped with runway. There are a few on islands, I think.

test flights only

[http://the.earth.li/~alex/halley/ (from livejournal.com)]

They've done some oz -> SA test flights, one of which pass over the south pole, mostly to pimp the new huge airbus, but no commercial flights beyond sightseeing tiki-tours.