Dear John and All,
Recently I was dreaming about visiting Athens and Paris as I passed a travel
agents. In this happy conjunction of circumstances, I entered and enquired
about the prices of fares.
The travel agent suggested that I might be better off buying a 'round world'
ticket and coming home via Canada and the USA. She then told me that I could
plan a route up to 29 000 miles for a certain price; up to 31 000 miles for
an additional amount; and so on.
When I naturally enquired 'What kind of miles are used to calculate the
fares?' she confidently told me that they were 'air miles'; and no amount of
questioning could elicit any further information such as the origin or the
length of an 'air mile' - she simply didn't know.
Does anyone know what 'air miles' are. Are they the same as one or other of
the land miles, or are they really nautical miles placed higher than sea
level?
Cheers,
Pat Naughtin CAMS
Geelong, Australia
on 07.12.2000 15.58, kilopascal at [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
> 2000-12-06
>
> Why don't they just drop the term "mile" and just call the unit
> "nautical(s)". Nautical miles per hour will still be called knots, but it
> will be newly defined as nauticals per hour. I'm sure someone can come up
> with a proper symbol.
>
> The reason I think this would be a good idea is for a couple of reasons:
>
> 1.) It will dissolve the connection with statute miles.
>
> 2.) It will end the common practice of dropping the term "nautical" in
> peoples minds when nautical mile is used, thus allowing people to assume a
> nautical mile and statute mile are one and the same.
>
> Which reminds me; when an airline pilot is telling the passengers that he
> has x miles visibility or x miles of something, is he converting nautical
> miles to statute, or is he really telling us nautical miles and just
> dropping the term nautical? Does anyone know?
>
> I'm sure someone else can also come up with some good reasons to change the
> nautical mile name to something else.
>
> John
>
>
> There are none more hopelessly enslaved then those who falsely believe they
> are free!
>
> Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832)
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]On
> Behalf Of James R. Frysinger
> Sent: Wednesday, 2000-12-06 19:23
> To: U.S. Metric Association
> Cc: U.S. Metric Association
> Subject: [USMA:9582] Re: CIA World Fact Book
>
>
> I used "NM" in my career in the Navy and never saw it any other way,
> except for the occasional "n. mi." or the spelled out version. There is
> no international standard symbol for nautical mile that anyone on this
> list could find.
>
> Jim
>
> Gregory Peterson wrote:
>>
>> Hello all,
>>
>> I faxed a suggestion to the CIA World Fact Book {they don't have
> an email address for some strange reason..... >;) } asking them
> to change the unit "nm" use for nautical miles to something more
> appropriate since "nm" means "nanometres".
>>
>> Today I received a call from a Mr. Bob Frasier (he told me his
> family was originally from Nova Scotia and he's related to the all
> the Frasiers 'down-east'). He manages the World Fact Book and was
> willing to change "nm" to "NM" since the Navy and Defence
> Department also use this capitalized abbreviation. Good enough for
> me. He also invited any other comments that I may have on the site.
>>
>> He told me that they receive 460'000 hits per month to their
> site, mostly from American school children. Since this site is
> primarily metric I was pleased to hear this statistic.
>>
>> greg
>> Saskatoon SK Canada
>
> --
> Metric Methods(SM) "Don't be late to metricate!"
> James R. Frysinger, CAMS http://www.metricmethods.com/
> 10 Captiva Row e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Charleston, SC 29407 phone/FAX: 843.225.6789
>
>
