A pilot on one of the flights over the weekend told us how far the flight was in nautical miles, which I would guess meant nothing to anybody on board, but may have really gotten some old guy who likes boats excited. If that was the case, it was worth it. Old guys who like boats deserve those little treasures now and then. Especially when they’re on an airplane. The incident, as you can tell, reminded me that nautical miles are something that exist, though until going to Wikipedia in anticipation of writing this blog post, I really didn’t know what a nautical mile was.
Evidently, it’s roughly equal to one minute of latitude (1/60th of a degree), but because the distance of a minute of latitude isn’t constant (since the Earth is not a perfect sphere), it’s been standardized to equal 1,852 meters, which is 6,076 feet, which is 1.151 miles.
If we’re not doing the one minute of latitude, I’m not sure what the reasoning is for the nautical mile continuing to exist, but then again, I don’t use the metric system, so I suppose I don’t have any room to talk.
Anyway, that’s what a nautical mile is. I don’t know why the pilot used it. Do all pilots use these? And if all of this is making you wonder what a knot is, a knot is one nautical mile per hour.
