The flight takes what is known as a great circle route that reflects the curve of the earth. On a flat sheet of paper, it looks like a curve even though it is the shortest and most efficient route between two points on a globe.
A tunnel straight through the earth that was wide enough to fly a plane through would be shorter. I have a son (nearly 16) who could probably easily and quickly construct something of the sort in Minecraft. It would take the seven year old a while, but he is a clever lad.
What a waste of time (he posted on FR).
Precisely
Funny how we can’t all translate these things. My hubby took flying lessons and laughed at my linear mind. To think of things like the size of the earth and flight paths in theory, is hard for me. I will stick to statistics.
Correct. A flat map is a false representation, literally called a “projection”, of the earth. The earth is actually a globe. If you took a globe map of the earth and stretched a string between these two points it would be a straight line.
It also looks a bit funky when plotted on a Mercator projection.
Have you ever realized you’re in an argument with a true ‘flat earther’? I thought they were a joke, until I met one - it was, ‘oh boy, this guy is serious!’.
All the astronomincal bodies you can observe are all round. The Sun, the moon, etc. - yet they’re convinced the earth is flat and this flight plan is a big scam. All the evidence in the world doesn’t convince them.
They probably vote D.
I believe it is also known as “The arc of the circumference.”
https://gisgeography.com/great-circle-geodesic-line-shortest-flight-path/
I learned this decades ago from a Ripley’s Believe It Or Not cartoon.