A plane takes off from an airport on the bearing S29degreesW. It continues for 20 minutes then changes to bearing S52degreesW and flies for 2 hours 20 minutes on his course then lands at the second airport. If the plane's speed is 420mph, how far from the first airport is the second airport?

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Originally Posted by rekupdates

a plane takes off from an airport on the bearing S29degreesW. it continues for 20 minutes then changes to bearing S52degreesW and flies for 2 hours 20 minutes on his course then lands at the second airport. if the plane's speed is 420mph, how far from the first airport is the second airport?

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Couple of ways you can approach this:

1. You can break the two flight vectors into their north-south and east-west components, then add the vectors and find its overall length using the Pythagorian Theorem, or

2. Apply the law of cosines, which requires that you find the angle between the two vectors and then use C^2 = A^2 + B^2 - 2AB cos(C)

Show us what you've tried and we'll check it for you.

What are these headings? Never seen like this? Thanks

S29degreesW and S52degreesW ?

S28 degreesW means 29 degrees west of due south - or a true bearing of 180+29 = 209 degrees (as measured clockwise from true north). Similarly S52degreesW means 52 degrees west of south, or a true bearing of 232 degrees. This method of measuring relative to the north or south direction is common in land surveying.