Scary reason why every plane in the world avoids flying over this zone
Niamh Shackleton
Featured Image Credit: Twitter/geoglobetales/Getty/Space Frontiers
Just like there's parts of the ocean that cruise ships avoid sailing over, there's also parts of the world that planes don't fly over either.
Drake's Passage has been dubbed one of the most dangerous strait in the world. The waterway connects the Pacific Ocean to Atlantic Ocean, with the Southern Ocean located just below.
It's traitorous waters are believed to have sank around 800 ships over the decades, claiming hundreds of lives in the process.
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With this in mind, it's understandable that a lot of cruise ships try and avoid going through Drake Passage if possible.
And there's a land alternative to Drake Passage as well that's a huge no-go for pilots to fly over, and that's the Tibetan Plateau in Southwest China.
The region is a whopping 2,500,000 square kilometers, so it's arguably a pretty large area to be avoiding.
But why do airlines avoid it, I hear you ask? It all comes down to Tibet's mountainous area.
The average elevation in the region is around 14,800 feet and while that's substantially lower that then 31,000 feet to 42,000 feet commercial airlines typically fly at, it can still cause problems.
In an emergency situation a plane will need to drop down to 10,000 feet within a certain amount of time so that safe oxygen levels can be reached. With this in mind, should a flight happen to need to drop down this level while traveling over the Tibetan Plateau it would be impossible as the plane would likely crash into one of the region's massive mountains.
Another sticky situation a plane would find itself in if it encountered an emergency situation in and around Tibet is the lack of airports to land at as there are only five major airports in the autonomous region of China.
Like Drake's Passage, the Tibetan Plateau can experience some extreme weather conditions meaning there's an increased chance of fights having turbulence.
The region is known of its strong winds and sudden weather changes, making for unfavorable flying conditions.
It's also known for hitting extremely cold temperatures which poses a risk of the jet's fuel freezing over.
According to Simple Flying, Standard Jet A1 fuel has a freezing point of -47 degrees Celsius, while Jet A is slightly higher at -40 degrees.
Such temperatures like these are seldom reached but it wouldn't be impossible for airlines to experience these cold climes at altitude while flying over Tibet's already cold mountains.