Explore Interesting Maps

Four lines converging from mainland Ecuador into the middle of the Pacific — Quito and Guayaquil each feed into both Baltra and San Cristóbal. Simple but striking because there's nothing else out there on the map. It's like watching Darwin's finches funnel into a bottleneck.

This legendary route hops across eight stops between Honolulu and Guam, island by island across the empty Pacific. On a great circle map it looks like a necklace draped across the world's largest ocean. Absolute avgeek royalty.

This nearly 15-hour route exists partly because it lets travelers move between China and Mexico without a US transit visa. The great circle arc cuts across the breadth of the Pacific in a single dramatic sweep.

Alaska's southeast panhandle milk run creeps down the coastline, with some legs covering barely 30 miles between glacier-hemmed towns. On a map it looks like someone sneezed while drawing a line down the panhandle — the anti-great-circle.