Explicit solutions for geodetic problems on the deformed sphere as reference model for the geoid (Q6171255)

\textit{A. M. Faridi} and \textit{E. L. Schucking} [Proc. Am. Math. Soc. 100, 522--525 (1987; Zbl 0622.53025)] presented a one-parameter family of ``deformed spheres'' which later on have been proposed as physically meaningful alternative to the standard ellipsoid model of the World Geodetic System 1984. While having parametric equations in terms of incomplete elliptic integrals, its geodesics are described by elementary analytic functions. This allows the authors to provide straightforward solutions to the direct and inverse geodetic problem (computing position from start point, start direction and arc length, and computing start direction and length from start and end point, respectively). A more detailed analysis makes the solutions globally valid and includes a description of point pairs with non-unique shortest connections. The article also includes a comparison of azimuth angles and geodesic distances for typical flight routes (including intercontinental flights) extracted from the World Geodetic System 1984 and the deformed sphere model for some reasonable value of the shape parameter \(\lambda\). The absolute errors do not exceed 15\,metres in length and about half a second in angle. The relative errors are in the range of \(10^{-5}\) to \(10^{-7}\). Optimization of the shape parameter with the purpose of even better conformity with the standard model is left to future research. For the entire collection see [Zbl 1516.53003].