What is a Great Circle route?
Answers.com defines it as “A segment of such a circle representing the shortest distance between two terrestrial points.” I have found a fabulous website that can help, Great Circle Mapper (http://gc.kls2.com/), where you can enter your itinerary and quickly get a map showing the great circle route that you would follow on that trip. The main page of Great Circle Mapper features an easy-to-use interface. When you get to the front page, you enter the route that you are interested in. You can enter it using the airport abbreviation (Chicago O’Hare = ORD) or you can use the name of the city. If the city has more than one airport, you will get a list of the airports in that area and can select the appropriate one. The itinerary I have entered above is Dallas-New York-Chicago-Dallas (DFW-JFK-ORD-DFW). The map of the DFW-JFK-ORD-DFW route. Great Circle Mapper provided the map above, showing the route, the mileage for each leg, and the initial heading that the aircraft will take. Is this the
