V-Flyer

Hello all
I know its a bit sad but I'm flying on VS073 on 31st October and take an interest on the flightpath. Over the summer the course has been quite direct, out over Ireland and hitting land over Kennedy Space Centre area (See 10th Oct for an example)

However, yesterday I noticed that the course had changed dramatically, flying further North and down over Canada and central America. It was a lot further, but would be great for the views (See 12th Oct for detail)

Todays flghtpath also seems to be taking the Northerly route.

I'm also aware that on the 31st when we fly the departure time has been pulled forward to 12:30 from the usual 14:05. Whats driving the change in flightpath, is it weather or just a winter route ?

current flightpath change could be due to topical storm Rafael?

and time change due to the clocks changing/winter schedule starting

The route any flight takes on any particular day depends on the weather (good / bad / storms to avoid etc) the winds & over the North Atlantic, the North Atlantic tracks (routes which vary on a daily basis to take into account the days weather conditions / the jetstream - put it into Wikipedia for a fairly accurate description).

I have done MAN-MCO often and have flown a mixture of Northern (over to Iceland, then down over Canada / inland USA, before going out over the Atlantic over Georgia to start the descent into MCO) & Southern (out to Dublin, then over the ocean near Cork before touching land near Kennedy Space Center on the descent into MCO).

The most unexpected routing I had was back in the ash cloud of 2009 - we had a 4hr delay on departure and even the Captain was expecting to be sent either very North of Iceland to avoid the ash, or down to Spain then start the crossing over the ocean, again to avoid the ash. We ended up flying a normal Southern route from MAN (as above) but boy did we climb fast, so as to get above the ash.