#002 | The Places In The World Where Planes Can't Fly | English Learning for Curious Minds Podcast

hello and welcome to English learning for curious minds by Leonardo English I'm your host Alistair budge and today we are going to be talking about some of the places in the world where aeroplanes aren't allowed to fly some of them you may be able to imagine but some of them well they may just surprise you before we get right into it though I just want to remind those of you listening on Apple podcasts Spotify or wherever you may get your podcasts you can get the transcript and keep up Cabrera for this podcast on the website

so that's Leonardo English comm there's also a whole load of information on how to use podcasts to learn English over on the blog so that's well worth look as well if you haven't already okay back to the matter at hand the places in the world where planes can't fly so there are a few categories of places where planes can't fly firstly airspace where countries don't allow other countries aeroplanes to fly for political reasons countries own the sky that's above them and they can choose to allow planes from other countries to use it or they can

choose to not allow them to use it a country might choose to not allow planes from another country to use its airspace if that country isn't an ally so for example Taiwanese aeroplanes can't fly over China israeli-arab planes can't fly over several Arab states and vice versa of course nowadays there aren't actually that many countries which ban the use of their airspace to other countries also not allowing planes to go into your airspace means losing out on revenue because every time an airplane goes into the airspace of another country that country charges a fee for

it but even 30 years ago things were very different Russia and China didn't allow Western aeroplanes to use their airspace meaning that planes from Europe wanting to go east for example would need to make a big detour to avoid airspace bellowing to the vast Soviet Union and China for example a flight from London to Tokyo and remember that the Japanese economy was booming in the 80s so this was a very desirable route so a flight from London to Tokyo would have to go from London to Greenland then over Alaska and then come down to Tokyo

if you could imagine a world map or a globe that's really not a direct route now of course they just fly over Russia and China so that's one reason secondly there is the category of places that are considered dangerous for commercial planes to fly over for geographical reasons one you might be familiar with or at least could imagine is Tibet so Tibet is located on the lofty Tibetan Plateau on the northern side of the Himalayas and is joint home to Mount Everest along with Nepal now why can't planes fly over Tibet well there are several

reasons firstly Tibet is very high with an average elevation of almost 5000 meters and if you think Mount Everest is eight point eight thousand meters then that really gives you an idea of quite how high Tibet is given the planes fly anywhere from nine and a half to eleven and a half kilometers high that's actually pretty close to the ground in Tibet there isn't just the risk that you're close to the top of the mountains but also the risk that if anything goes wrong well you'd be in trouble for a few reasons firstly oxygen aeroplanes

do of course have oxygen masks but these only have enough oxygen for 15 to 20 minutes there's a regulation that requires airline operators to be able to descend to around 3,000 meters to ensure that passengers have enough oxygen and given that the average height of the ground in Tibet is 5000 meters well going down to 3,000 meters is a bit of a problem secondly if anything goes wrong and a plane is required to make an emergency landing well that's not very easy in the Himalayas so that's why no planes allowed to fly over Tibet there

are a few other reasons so installing and maintaining a radar network in Tibet would be incredibly expensive and so China just doesn't do it in Himalayas if there's no radar Network then there's no way of guiding and supporting pilots and so they just don't do it in the first place I should point out that there are flights to Lhasa which is the capital of Tibet these will all fly from within China and as lassi is on the eastern side of Tibet these flights avoid most of the very mountainous region in any case you can't fly

to Tibet from the West for many reasons that we could group together and say you might crash into the mountains and not be able to breathe which seems after all pretty sensible it's for similar reasons that you might think that commercial flights don't fly over Antarctica however there's another more practical reason and it's actually a economic reason it's that they just really isn't the demand for flights to go over Antarctica if you take out a globe you'll see that the only real practical flight would be from somewhere like the bottom of South America to Australia

but there just isn't enough demand to warrant the investment in radar stations and equipment to support these routes so that's our second category places where it's just not safe enough to fly over for natural geographical reasons reasons that are very sensible such as you may crash into a mountain thirdly there are those places where commercial airlines can't fly because the countries that own the airspace and own the ground underneath it aren't considered safe enough for passengers what's called no-fly zones are implemented and then removed on a regular basis and subject to political events Libya for

example was subject to a no-fly zone in 2011 and then again in 2018 and 2019 other areas that have been subject to no-fly zones include Iran Mali Yemen North Korea the list goes on the reason that from time to time of course flying is prohibited over these areas is pretty simple the possibility that the plane might be shot down or that if it has to make an emergency landing the passengers will not be given the warmest of welcomes when they land in that country finally our fourth category may just surprise you now if you're wondering

what Disney World Disneyland and Buckingham Palace have in common now I'm not gonna make any jokes here about the inhabitants I'll leave that to your own imagination Disney World Disneyland and Buckingham Palace all have no-fly zones above them meaning that no planes are allowed to travel at whatever height in the case of Disneyland and Disney World it's ostensibly from a security perspective as this came into place after the 9/11 terrorist attacks however other theme parks were a bit annoyed when this happened as they used to fly adverts for their parks above Disneyland Disney World now

of course they can't these aren't their only tourist sites with no-fly zones though Machu Picchu in Peru has one as does the Taj Mahal in India and the Parthenon in Greece in fact the entire city of Paris has one so if you've been in Paris looked up at the sky while you are enjoying your revolution camembert or coffee and croissant and wondered where all the planes were well now you've got your answer I think we'd all agree that being able to enjoy these attractions without aeroplanes flying overhead is a good thing and if it reduces

the possibility of any kind of terrorist attack well that's a positive thing as well okay I hope this has been interesting we've taken a good look at the places in the world where planes can't fly and now you know what Disneyland Disneyworld and Buckingham Palace will have in common stay tuned as we've got another podcast in the pipeline about who owns the sky I don't know about you but I find this stuff pretty fascinating as always if you've enjoyed this podcast I want to get notified whenever we release a new one then just hit that

subscribe button if you're looking for the key vocabulary and transcript this podcast you can grab those over on the website which is Leonardo English comm as a final thought please do consider taking 20 seconds out of your day and leaving a review each review helps people find out about the podcast and the more people who listen well the better it'll get there everyone it's been an absolute pleasure and I'll catch you in the next episode you've been listening to me Alistair budge and this has been English learning for curious minds by Leonardo English [Music]