[edby]

Agreed. I would say at this point, FET doesn't have an explanation as to how travel as described and happens everyday can occur.

What about jet streams?

[topcat1019]

To add to that, can someone answer this travel question: What's the distance from Chicago to Barcelona? and what's the distance from Buenos Aires to Cape Town, South Africa?

Here's why:
Traveling by airplane from Chicago to Barcelona on a globe is measured at about 4,400 miles. Traveling from Buenos Aires to Capetown is about the same distance (4,200 miles). Flying from Chicago to Barcelona would stay entirely along the 42° n latitude (exactly straight ahead; never turning the airplane), and Buenos Air/Capetown trip would remain entirely along the 34° south latitude (also never turning). If 2 planes take off at the same time, they should both arrive at their destinations at the same time. However, I haven't seen detailed flat earth maps, but it looks like the Buenos Aires trip should be 2.5x longer distance. Also, you would have to keep the airplane turning along a curve, rather than straight ahead. Have either of these been measured and proven? Seems like an easy way to prove the flat map once and for all.

[robinofloxley]

Agreed. I would say at this point, FET doesn't have an explanation as to how travel as described and happens everyday can occur.

Since these discussions have become been quite detailed, I think maybe a picture would be in order.

Three routes shown here, all between London Heathrow (LHR) and Auckland NZ (AKL). Going via Los Angeles (LAX), Tokyo (HND) and Dubai (DXB).

On a globe these would be very straightforward great circle routes and it wouldn't matter which one you took, they'd all be more or less the same distance and take the same time.

On a flat earth, the yellow dotted straight lines would be the shortest, but it's clearly a lot further going via Dubai (DXB) than Tokyo (HND) and all of these routes are longer than the direct path between LHR and AKL (blue dashed line).

The red lines are the three great circle routes, but these are clearly different lengths as well and going via Dubai makes no logical sense, even though in the real world it is a popular route to take.

[robinofloxley]

To add to that, can someone answer this travel question: What's the distance from Chicago to Barcelona? and what's the distance from Buenos Aires to Cape Town, South Africa?

Here's why:
Traveling by airplane from Chicago to Barcelona on a globe is measured at about 4,400 miles. Traveling from Buenos Aires to Capetown is about the same distance (4,200 miles). Flying from Chicago to Barcelona would stay entirely along the 42° n latitude (exactly straight ahead; never turning the airplane), and Buenos Air/Capetown trip would remain entirely along the 34° south latitude (also never turning). If 2 planes take off at the same time, they should both arrive at their destinations at the same time. However, I haven't seen detailed flat earth maps, but it looks like the Buenos Aires trip should be 2.5x longer distance. Also, you would have to keep the airplane turning along a curve, rather than straight ahead. Have either of these been measured and proven? Seems like an easy way to prove the flat map once and for all.

Regarding the distance from Chicago to Barcelona, note that the shortest route (approximately 4400 miles as you say) will not follow the 42 deg latitude line, that would be a rhumb line and would be longer (4644 miles). The shortest route is always a great circle route and in this case, you're saving a couple of hundred miles compared with following the 42 degree latitude route. The great circle route would arc northwards in a curve up to about 52N and then arc back down again.

Commercial flights generally follow great circle routes. I say generally because it often makes sense to take a slightly longer route to pick up favourable winds or avoid unfavourable ones - longer, but faster. Modern aircraft autopilots have no problems making constant course corrections to follow a carefully pre-planned route. The actual route may then vary from the pre-planned one, depending on the weather conditions encountered. So in reality we'd expect to see a planned flight being slightly further than the ideal direct great circle distance and the actual probably a little different from the planned.

Taking the American AA40 flight between Chicago (ORD) and Barcelona (BCN) on 27th Oct as an example, this flight had a planned route of 4487 miles, that ended up being 4511 miles (source https://uk.flightaware.com/live/flight/AAL40). Pretty much exactly what you'd expect.

[topcat1019]

Robinofloxley:

Thanks for the detailed flight info, but I'll clarify my question. What is the straight line distance between Buenos Aires and Cape Town? On a globe it would roughly be the same distance as Chicago to Barcelona.  But on a flat map it would be 2.5x further. Also, if I read a flat map correctly, taking a straight line trip from Buenos Aires to Cape Town would require flying northeast essentially along the entire east coast of South America, where on a globe it would be over open ocean the entire trip. So which is it? This seems a fairly easy question to prove. I'm less interested in what commercial flights actually do and more interested in how to prove globe vs flat. Skipping the great circle routes, it seems a simple test would be taking off from two cities mentioned, and flying due east along each latitude at same speed toward each destination. Globe model says they'll reach their destinations, FE theory says they won't.

I'm including a graphic to show that a globe trip would require travel due east, over open ocean, while FE model indicates northeast travel over land - the east coast of South America. Again, seems like a simple way to prove which is correct. I also marked the distance on a flat map of Chicago to Barcelona, which is quite shorter than Buenos Aires to Cape Town on a flat map.

[robinofloxley]

Robinofloxley:

Thanks for the detailed flight info, but I'll clarify my question. What is the straight line distance between Buenos Aires and Cape Town? On a globe it would roughly be the same distance as Chicago to Barcelona.  But on a flat map it would be 2.5x further. Also, if I read a flat map correctly, taking a straight line trip from Buenos Aires to Cape Town would require flying northeast essentially along the entire east coast of South America, where on a globe it would be over open ocean the entire trip. So which is it? This seems a fairly easy question to prove. I'm less interested in what commercial flights actually do and more interested in how to prove globe vs flat. Skipping the great circle routes, it seems a simple test would be taking off from two cities mentioned, and flying due east along each latitude at same speed toward each destination. Globe model says they'll reach their destinations, FE theory says they won't.

I'm including a graphic to show that a globe trip would require travel due east, over open ocean, while FE model indicates northeast travel over land - the east coast of South America. Again, seems like a simple way to prove which is correct. I also marked the distance on a flat map of Chicago to Barcelona, which is quite shorter than Buenos Aires to Cape Town on a flat map.

Well I suppose it depends which flat map you are using. The one most people are going to agree on is the "we're working on it" map which nobody has ever seen. The moment you pick a map, someone is going to come along and ask why you picked that one and tell you we all know it's wrong.

However, I'll go ahead and pick the commonly referenced azimuthal equidistant map (AE). If I draw a straight line between Buenos Aires airport (EZE) and Capetown airport (CPT), I find that's about 1.73 times the distance from the north pole to the equator, so if we take that to be 10,000km, that makes the straight-line distance between the two airports to be 17300km or 10,750 miles. Same method gives me Chicago to Barcelona as 7700km (4,785 miles).

I agree, on a globe, very similar distance, flat earth - well who knows really, but you have my workings for what they are worth.