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Oh sorry, I didn’t see you there.

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I was just here admiring this… domestic
American flight from Denver to Charlotte.

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Look how… mostly direct it is.

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And really, that’s the beauty of planes;
planes are great because you don’t have

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to follow any convoluted roads—you just
fill your plane up with plane juice, point

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it at North Carolina, and kick back with a
3 hour 10 minute nap.

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That’s not actually how it works, but flight
routes pretty much look like that in most

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parts of the world…

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except for China.

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When flying over China, flight routes look
more like this, or this, or this.

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They’ve got all sorts of random twists and
turns, even though they’re just flying through

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the open sky.

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So, what gives?

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Well, this is an interesting question, but
in order to explain why China’s flight routes

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look so weird, you need to understand how
flight routes work in general.

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Remember that thing I said earlier about how
planes are great because they don’t have

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to follow any convoluted roads?

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Well, I hope that didn’t convince you to
pause the video and spend three to nine months

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getting a pilot's license, because that was
a lie.

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Planes do have to follow roads; they’re
just invisible.

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In fact, there have been invisible roads in
the sky for nearly a hundred years now.

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At first, there was just one: the transcontinental
airway, which directed mail planes from New

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York to San Francisco using concrete arrows
on the ground.

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And that was great, unless you wanted to fly
in bad weather, over the water, or to anywhere

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for any other reason besides delivering a
letter to some guy in San Francisco.

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So, our modern system of invisible sky roads—or,
let’s just call them “airways” because

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we’re not Civil War era ghosts who are confused
and frightened by modern technology—that

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airway system works pretty differently.

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Basically, when a plane submits its planned
route to air traffic control, that route will

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be defined by a series of waypoints that they’re
going to pass through or near during the flight.

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There are thousands of these waypoints all
over the globe, and they each have their own

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five-letter names—sometimes even fun five-letter
names, like UTOOB and EBAYE in the Bay Area,

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TULIP outside the Netherlands, WIKID PAHTI
in New England, and INBRD right over the border

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of Alabama… which obviously just means “inboard.”

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It’s inboard.

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I don’t know why I thought INBRD near Alabama
was funny.

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It’s not.

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It just means inboard.

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Okay, moving on.

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Now, these waypoints are usually strung together
in long, criss-crossing airways, but planes

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don’t always have to follow those exact
routes; most of the time, they use waypoints

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at the beginning and end of the flight to
change direction, speed, or altitude, and

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then spend the rest of the flight taking the
shortest possible route to their destination.

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That’s why long-haul flights across the
US and Europe tend to look more like this

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and less like this, and ticket prices look
more like this and less like this.

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But here’s where things get a little complicated:
the sky belongs to the government.

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Every government owns some chunk of the sky—all
of the sky within 12 nautical miles of their

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coast stretching all the way up to… actually,
no one knows.

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Most proposals are somewhere between 30 and
160 kilometers above sea level, but there

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isn’t actually a real legal boundary for
where the sky ends and space begins, so—since

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I’m feeling petty—let’s just say it’s
351,221 feet—exactly one foot higher than

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Jeff Bezos flew in his suggestively-shaped
divorce escape pod.

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Now, while most governments have agreed to
open up their skies for commercial use in

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exchange for a little bit of that in-flight
WiFi money, there are still places they don’t

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want anyone flying.

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Now, in most countries, so little of the sky
is restricted that this hardly affects civilian

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flight routes.

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Over the US, for example, only about 10% of
the airspace is off-limits at any given time—places

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like Washington DC, Manhattan, Camp David,
anywhere within 5 nautical miles of an ongoing

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WrestleMania, most major sporting events,
certain military sites, and, interestingly,

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Disney World, because Disney successfully
lobbied to turn a temporary post-9/11 precaution

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into a permanent no-fly zone over their mouse-themed
swamp.

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For the most part, it’s pretty easy to avoid
these places without adding too much time

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to your route.

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But sometimes, these types of restrictions
can take a nice, sensible straight line and

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turn it into a zig-zaggy nightmare.

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Doha to Khartoum, for example, is usually
an easy three and a half hour flight.

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But when Saudi Arabia declared “oh no you
don’t” and stopped allowing Qatari aircraft

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from going through their airspace in 2017,
the length of that flight nearly doubled.

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Just last year, Afghanistan did effectively
the same thing to… everyone else in the

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entire world, turning Afghani airspace into
a giant wall that every flight in the region

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needs to reroute around.

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And don’t even get me started on how stupid
flight routes looked like during the Cold

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War.

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For the most part, though, these sorts of
really convoluted routes are just the result

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of international conflicts.

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No one would do this to themselves…

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right?

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“Wrong,” says China.

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You see, China’s flight routes look so weird
because of restrictions they’ve imposed

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on themselves.

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They still have the same sorts of waypoints
and airways that the rest of the world has,

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but it’s almost impossible to make a direct
beeline for your destination.

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And that’s because only about 20 to 30%
of China’s airspace is set aside for civilian

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aviation, and the other 70 to 80% is reserved
for the Chinese military to, I don’t know,

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practice their skywriting skills?

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This means that commercial flights—even
domestic commercial flights—have to stick

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to fairly tight corridors to stay inside approved
airspace, and can’t just take whatever route

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is most convenient.

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Now, not to go all “ooh China bad” on
you, but at least in this case… yeah, China

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bad.

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Not only does this mean that flights over
China are usually longer than they have to

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be, cramming all of the planes into small
airways means that delays and cancellations

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are much more common, too.

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Even before the pandemic made delays the hot
new trend, about a third of Chinese flights

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were delayed every day—and in Shanghai,
that number was closer to half.

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Fortunately, it seems like China is working
on opening up more civilian airspace, so if

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you’re watching this video in the future
from your on-time beeline Chinese flight,

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well… sorry for wasting your expensive WiFi.

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00:05:27,890 --> 00:05:32,230
So, as many of you have by now noticed, Half
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00:05:32,230 --> 00:05:36,480
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00:05:37,480 --> 00:05:39,350
They responded by… sponsoring us?

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00:05:42,650 --> 00:05:47,140
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