GabyIf you look at the flight trajectories aircraft Traveling around the world, one can notice several interesting features. One of them is that planes do not always fly in straight lines to their destinations. And if you take a closer look at these air routes, you’ll find that very few planes fly over Tibet.
Landscape Tibet As is known, this is a multitude of mountains and elevated plateaus. While this may not be a problem for airplanes, as they can simply ascend above the mountains, it is precisely the mountains that cause pilots to try to avoid flying over this region, the publication reported. IFLScience .
The first problem: mountain ranges create strong turbulence. “It’s a kind of disturbance in the air that is not much different from the movement of waves and ocean currents. If there are no obstacles in the path of an incoming wave, it will move smoothly, but if it, say, encounters a sea wall, it will break, and you will see the wave’s destruction,” explained Darren Ansell, head of the Department of Space and Aerospace Engineering at the University of Central Lancashire (UK).
According to him, when air flows over artificial structures and natural terrain, such as mountains, the airflow is disrupted and causes turbulence “So if you are taking off or landing at an airport located near a mountain range or very hilly terrain, you are very likely to encounter this type of turbulence during takeoff and shortly thereafter,” the expert added.
The second problem is safety. Although flying over Tibet is generally possible, the mountain ranges can make the journey bumpy. In the region, planes must fly much higher than the average altitude of 5,000 meters. However, if the cabin depressurizes (a rare event), pilots will likely have to descend to about 3,000 meters, where the air is breathable, before looking for an opportunity to land at the nearest airfield. However, descending to that altitude will simply crash you into the mountain range.
For these reasons, as well as the lack of areas suitable for emergency landings, planes try to avoid flying over Tibet.
