I can explain it, you just won't accept it.
“You expect an answer to a rhetorical question?”
No, because you can’t figure out how to come up with an answer.
The question forces you to confront an easily visualized and insoluble problem created by a Flat Earth.
You can’t figure out how to explain circumnavigation.
The “rhetorical” airplane has to fly off the Edge of the Flat Earth, since it can’t be flying around a globe that doesn’t exist.
Feel free to find some Flat Earth model showing us how it is that airplanes arrive back at their starting point if they fly in the same direction long enough.
We could always switch the question to flying/sailing to the West and see if you have any better luck figuring out an answer. Go for it, Ferdinand Magellan.
Pelham - This is a real hard one to open the mind to, so I understand your attitude. Check out the Azimuthal Equidistant map projection on Wikipedia (USGS official map on their logo).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Azimuthal_equidistant_projection
This projection can be cut up and applied to a globe and conversely. The grid is a manmade construct based on a sphere where the Equator is set at 0 degrees and 90 degrees at the North Pole and 90 degrees at the South POle. ON a flat plane map of earth as shown in the Azim.Equid. proj., the North Pole could be Zero degrees, and arbitrarily end at 180 degrees at the Antarctic rim. The bulk of the land mass is in the Northern half of either scenario. When you look at the Azim.Equid. projection, it makes more sense how the land mass was together (Pangea, Gondwanaland were a few of the ancient names before breaking into continents). Planes going from Japan to San Fran fly over the Arctic Circle, not straight across the Pacific, which looks closer on a globe. Look at the line from NYC to the tip of South America, the closest any continent is to Antarctica. No circumnavigation involved.
I can explain it, you just won't accept it.
Flat Earth Truth In Plain Sight With Swiss Solar Powered Airplane With Pilot Piccard
Linked for a visual representation. The comments/thoughts in the video are the video provider's, not mine.