Oh sorry, I didn’t see you there. I was just here admiring this… domestic
American flight from Denver to Charlotte. Look how… mostly direct it is. And really, that’s the beauty of planes;
planes are great because you don’t have to follow any convoluted roads—you just
fill your plane up with plane juice, point it at North Carolina, and kick back with a
3 hour 10 minute nap. That’s not actually how it works, but flight
routes pretty much look like that in most parts of the world… except for China. When flying over China, flight routes look
more like this, or this, or this. They’ve got all sorts of random twists and
turns, even though they’re just flying through the open sky. So, what gives? Well, this is an interesting question, but
in order to explain why China’s flight routes look so weird, you need to understand how
flight routes work in general. Remember that thing I said earlier about how
planes are great because they don’t have to follow any convoluted roads? Well, I hope that didn’t convince you to
pause the video and spend three to nine months getting a pilot's license, because that was
a lie. Planes do have to follow roads; they’re
just invisible. In fact, there have been invisible roads in
the sky for nearly a hundred years now. At first, there was just one: the transcontinental
airway, which directed mail planes from New York to San Francisco using concrete arrows
on the ground. And that was great, unless you wanted to fly
in bad weather, over the water, or to anywhere for any other reason besides delivering a
letter to some guy in San Francisco. So, our modern system of invisible sky roads—or,
let’s just call them “airways” because we’re not Civil War era ghosts who are confused
and frightened by modern technology—that airway system works pretty differently. Basically, when a plane submits its planned
route to air traffic control, that route will be defined by a series of waypoints that they’re
going to pass through or near during the flight. There are thousands of these waypoints all
over the globe, and they each have their own five-letter names—sometimes even fun five-letter
names, like UTOOB and EBAYE in the Bay Area, TULIP outside the Netherlands, WIKID PAHTI
in New England, and INBRD right over the border of Alabama… which obviously just means “inboard.” It’s inboard. I don’t know why I thought INBRD near Alabama
was funny. It’s not. It just means inboard. Okay, moving on. Now, these waypoints are usually strung together
in long, criss-crossing airways, but planes don’t always have to follow those exact
routes; most of the time, they use waypoints at the beginning and end of the flight to
change direction, speed, or altitude, and then spend the rest of the flight taking the
shortest possible route to their destination. That’s why long-haul flights across the
US and Europe tend to look more like this and less like this, and ticket prices look
more like this and less like this. But here’s where things get a little complicated:
the sky belongs to the government. Every government owns some chunk of the sky—all
of the sky within 12 nautical miles of their coast stretching all the way up to… actually,
no one knows. Most proposals are somewhere between 30 and
160 kilometers above sea level, but there isn’t actually a real legal boundary for
where the sky ends and space begins, so—since I’m feeling petty—let’s just say it’s
351,221 feet—exactly one foot higher than Jeff Bezos flew in his suggestively-shaped
divorce escape pod. Now, while most governments have agreed to
open up their skies for commercial use in exchange for a little bit of that in-flight
WiFi money, there are still places they don’t want anyone flying. Now, in most countries, so little of the sky
is restricted that this hardly affects civilian flight routes. Over the US, for example, only about 10% of
the airspace is off-limits at any given time—places like Washington DC, Manhattan, Camp David,
anywhere within 5 nautical miles of an ongoing WrestleMania, most major sporting events,
certain military sites, and, interestingly, Disney World, because Disney successfully
lobbied to turn a temporary post-9/11 precaution into a permanent no-fly zone over their mouse-themed
swamp. For the most part, it’s pretty easy to avoid
these places without adding too much time to your route. But sometimes, these types of restrictions
can take a nice, sensible straight line and turn it into a zig-zaggy nightmare. Doha to Khartoum, for example, is usually
an easy three and a half hour flight. But when Saudi Arabia declared “oh no you
don’t” and stopped allowing Qatari aircraft from going through their airspace in 2017,
the length of that flight nearly doubled. Just last year, Afghanistan did effectively
the same thing to… everyone else in the entire world, turning Afghani airspace into
a giant wall that every flight in the region needs to reroute around. And don’t even get me started on how stupid
flight routes looked like during the Cold War. For the most part, though, these sorts of
really convoluted routes are just the result of international conflicts. No one would do this to themselves… right? “Wrong,” says China. You see, China’s flight routes look so weird
because of restrictions they’ve imposed on themselves. They still have the same sorts of waypoints
and airways that the rest of the world has, but it’s almost impossible to make a direct
beeline for your destination. And that’s because only about 20 to 30%
of China’s airspace is set aside for civilian aviation, and the other 70 to 80% is reserved
for the Chinese military to, I don’t know, practice their skywriting skills? This means that commercial flights—even
domestic commercial flights—have to stick to fairly tight corridors to stay inside approved
airspace, and can’t just take whatever route is most convenient. Now, not to go all “ooh China bad” on
you, but at least in this case… yeah, China bad. Not only does this mean that flights over
China are usually longer than they have to be, cramming all of the planes into small
airways means that delays and cancellations are much more common, too. Even before the pandemic made delays the hot
new trend, about a third of Chinese flights were delayed every day—and in Shanghai,
that number was closer to half. Fortunately, it seems like China is working
on opening up more civilian airspace, so if you’re watching this video in the future
from your on-time beeline Chinese flight, well… sorry for wasting your expensive WiFi. So, as many of you have by now noticed, Half
as Interesting is really, secretly just a long-con to see how much I can make Storyblocks
regret offering an unlimited stock footage plan. They responded by… sponsoring us? It’s really kinda an alpha move and honestly
has me pretty confused but, whatever. It’s an easy enough ad to do because Storyblocks
is pretty obviously an awesome deal. Most stock footage sites charge hundreds of
dollars per clip; Storyblocks charges far less than that for an unlimited subscription. Also, their footage catalog is actually really
good and large—quite literally since the day I started making videos it’s been the
first place I’ve gone to look for a clip I need and, usually, I find it. Also, it’s not just stock footage—they
have after effects and premiere pro templates, music, images, sound effects, pretty much
everything you need to make anything creative. Storyblocks is a crucial part of our toolkit
so, if you do any online creation, it should really be part of yours. Click the button on-screen or head over to
storyblocks.com/hai to sign up, and you’ll be helping support HAI while you’re at it.
We have also been having this issue with the Iranian military over here where they simply don't open up the airspace because they can. I don't have an exact number of how much is restricted for civilian use but the majority of it is definitely pointless. recently they semi-agreed to open up some parts only if the revenue gained from flights going through those regions goes to them! Which shows that even they understand that they are unnecessarily damaging the commercial sector. However at the end of the day it is Iran and way more weird things happen over here.