Flying Over the North Pole with a Spinning Compass

For the A380 flight from Dubai to San Francisco, Emirates flew directly over the North Pole.

Most of the plane was asleep, but I noticed something bizarre — the plane icon spun around, like a compass needle would do over the North Pole. This photo is from the precise moment when the plane crossed the North Pole dot on the screen.

I would have thought the plane navigated by GPS, and if it relied on a magnetic compass, it would use an inertial system to ignore wild swings in the compass readings as long as the plane was flying in a straight line.

I assumed the “North Pole” on the map was the geographic North Pole, and not the magnetic North Pole, so it should not be a special point for a compass reading. I thought perhaps there is some other software bug at play as we crossed over. But as I look at the 2019 location of the migrating magnetic North pole, it appears to be the location indicated on the map, perhaps of more relevance to the pilots.