61

Flat Earth Investigations / Re: Investigating flight paths experiment for round earthers

« on: March 16, 2022, 01:58:04 PM »

New question.. Why are there never any planes in the Southern Hemisphere on flight radar?



Let me guess.. Covid or Putin.

Many reasons.

As has been said, the vast majority of people are in the Northern hemisphere.
Also, there are more population centres further to the north (in the N hemisphere) than they are to the south (in the S hemisphere).

You just have to look at your screenshot of FR24…. Look at the location of the equator, then look at the amount of land mass above that dotted line and compare it to the land mass below the line.

But given all of that, the effect of Covid is significant. It’s impact on countries such as S Africa, New Zealand and Australia over the past few years, aviation is nowhere near what it was in 2019 when there were more direct flights between S hemisphere cities than there are now. Think about where the flights you think should be in the areas of your question marks would be flying to and from. S. America and Australia/NZ, Aus/NZ and S Africa, S. Africa and S America.

I work at London Heathrow airport, before Covid there were around 30 flights a day (so maybe 6000 passenger seats per day) to New York, because London and New York are incredibly important global cities with many business links and high travel demand.

I don’t think one can compare that city pair to Perth and Buenos Aires.

62

Flat Earth Investigations / Re: Investigating flight paths experiment for round earthers

« on: March 16, 2022, 11:22:26 AM »

Hang on, you want us to use Auckland to Cape Town, which, on your itinerary, includes a Sydney to Jo’burg (over two legs) journey, but not Sydney to Jo’burg itself, which actually has direct flights?

Any reason why?

Please do some reading on airline hub-and-spoke operations.

63

Flat Earth Investigations / Re: Investigating flight paths experiment for round earthers

« on: March 16, 2022, 08:39:03 AM »

As has been said, due to the pandemic, especially the travel restrictions in Australia and NZ, aviation is nowhere near where it was in this area pre-pandemic.

If you go to both Perth and Auckland airports’ website departures page, you will see the selection of destinations each airport serves direct.

It’s far fewer than pre-pandemic.

Such routes as you suggest will, at the moment, always be routed through hubs such as Dubai or Singapore.

Why are you specifically asking for those routes?

64

Flat Earth Theory / Re: Wiki on aviation

« on: March 10, 2022, 03:42:20 PM »

Of course there's a reason. Tom cherry picks to suit his agenda.

All he's got in that Wiki page is a one off letter sent in by someone who claims to be someone. It's interesting to note his incredulity in this thread when jimster related a conversation he had with someone who wrote software which uses spherical geometry equations. Compare and contrast that with the credulity he shows about a letter which someone wrote in to a magazine in 1979 which happens to fit his agenda.
And then the Wiki page cites a document which describes a flat earth as a "simplifying assumption".  Simplifying assumptions are, by definition, things which are not true. But they make the model simpler and so long as the differences are negligible then they can be made. Other "simplifying assumptions" are that "the aircraft has constant mass" and "there is constant wind". These things are also not true, they're just simplifications to make the model and maths easier, like spherical cows ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spherical_cow ). If the earth were flat then they wouldn't have to name it as a simplifying assumption, the fact it's mentioned as a simplification is evidence for a globe.
There's also a whole section in that document about the force of gravity. That is conveniently ignored.

Quite.

Cognitive dissonance on a massive, if not global, scale, one might say.

If one quote from one chapter of one study resource from an introductory course in a university in The Netherlands, and one random letter that is, in fact, talking about the celestial sphere, are all the cherries to be found regarding flat earth in aviation....well, they must be pretty dry and shrivelled up by now.

More than happy to be corrected by Action80 and Tom as to their aviation experience where they were taught how to 'fly over a flat earth'.

65

Flat Earth Theory / Re: Wiki on aviation

« on: March 10, 2022, 11:47:26 AM »

Is there any reason why the articles on aerostudents.com that refer to the globe aren't quoted? There are quite a few that refer to orbital dynamics too. Even that Flight Dynmics article goes on to talk about reference frames with an axis coming from the center of the Earth.

66

Flat Earth Theory / Re: Wiki on aviation

« on: March 10, 2022, 07:33:31 AM »

Fortunately I didn't say it was a course for pilots. I merely said that it supported it.

Can you explain why you say this?

pilots are taught to fly over a FE, as demonstrated in that guide from a flight dynamics course.

and pilots are taught to fly, over a flat, non-rotating earth.

The fact that the plane is built to fly over an FE

This is all nonsense. Again, what is your aviation background? Aerodynamicist? Pilot? Aerostructure engineer? I mean to make such statements one hopes you have some formal training and experience, to be able to say the things about pilot training and aero engineering as you are.

67

Flat Earth Theory / Re: Wiki on aviation

« on: March 09, 2022, 06:36:11 PM »

Tom, can I ask what your professional experience within aviation consists of?

You do understand that flight dynamics, when applied to an aircraft, is concerned with the stability, and movement, of a body along three axes due to the changing angle of attack to the airflow.

The influence of the shape of the earth at this level is neglible.

In aviation, we make lots of assumptions to simplify things in order to focus on the important areas being studied at the time. When studying flight dynamics, one might assume the earth is flat. When starting to study radar theory, one might assume all aircraft reflect the same amount of radar energy (spoiler, this isn't true either!). In many cases we assume the air is the International Standard Atmosphere, within which are several other assumptions of air pressure, density, temperature, adiabatic lapse rate etc. This doesn't mean we believe the air pressure across the whole earth at sea level is 15 degrees celsius, nor that the air pressure across the whole earth at sea level is 1013.25hPa.

that pilots are taught to fly over a FE, as demonstrated in that guide from a flight dynamics course.

Are you a pilot? I've never been taught or told that the earth is flat in any of my training to be a pilot, or an air traffic controller, nor have I trained that to any of my trainees over the past 23 years.

68

Flat Earth Theory / Re: Found a fully working flat earth model?

« on: February 22, 2022, 11:38:36 PM »

It’s certainly an interesting thought experiment, but agreed, it’s not a model, let alone a ‘fully working’ model.

69

Flat Earth Theory / Re: Found a fully working flat earth model?

« on: February 04, 2022, 10:16:01 PM »

Troolon,

In your diagramme above, what would I experience if I was stood on the top of the tower block, looking at the person on the right? Would they appear to be a lot lower than they actually were in reality? (Let’s remove the boat for the moment)

70

Flat Earth Theory / Re: Found a fully working flat earth model?

« on: February 04, 2022, 07:44:17 AM »

Sigh.

It’s called the ‘moon tilt illusion’ because it’s just that, an optical illusion. The illuminated side of the moon appears to point away from the sun.

As you know, if you use a straight object, or a taught piece of string, and hold it up joining the moon to the sun, you will very quickly and simply discover it does indeed point at the sun.

Perhaps you were doing it wrong?

71

Flat Earth Theory / Re: Where is Google Maps wrong?

« on: January 19, 2022, 07:01:09 PM »

@Gonzo: although the numbers may vary, I think 'RE and FE are in broad agreement that eastbound transatlantic traffic gets a benefit from wind in terms of speed, range and fuel-burn.  Tom's contention, however, is that traffic from Europe to North America also consistently gets a benefit from easterly winds.  Any comment?

I'd go one further - Tom's contention appears to be that pilots and airline ops teams do not know how far their aircraft are flying, or what the wind is doing in the airspace they are operating in. That is an absurd suggestion, and is demonstrably false.

Anyone invovled in aviation will know this contention is ridiculous. I am in my unit's Operations department, where we work on new procedures, equipment and liaise with airlines and other ATC organisations. I was on a call earlier today with representatives (including senior pilots) of a major global airline talking about sustainability. We were examining their fuel burn calculations from a recent flight, and how making one tweak in procedure had saved 30kgs of fuel, and another had saved 6kgs of fuel. We also looked at the readout each Captain gets of her/his environmental performance, and how efficient the flight planning and how accurate the fuel calculation prediction was for each flight plan. Differences of tens of kgs was remarked upon. Bear in mind that an A320 burns about 45kg of fuel per minute in the cruise. A Boeing 777 will burn over 100kgs of fuel per minute. If flying times were seemingly so variable and unpredictable, the margin of error on fuel calculations would be so wide such as to make long haul flying uneconomical and wildly unpredictable. Which is not the reality we experience.

72

Flat Earth Theory / Re: Where is Google Maps wrong?

« on: January 19, 2022, 06:46:40 PM »

@Gonzo: although the numbers may vary, I think 'RE and FE are in broad agreement that eastbound transatlantic traffic gets a benefit from wind in terms of speed, range and fuel-burn.  Tom's contention, however, is that traffic from Europe to North America also consistently gets a benefit from easterly winds.  Any comment?

Winds over the N. Atlantic are generally westerly. I've never seen or heard of a consistent tailwind for a westbound transatlantic. Depending on the strength and position of the N. Atlantic jetstream, they may go to some considerable length to avoid it, running far south or north of the ideal great circle route: They're doing so to avoid a headwind, not take advantage of a tailwind.

73

Flat Earth Theory / Re: Where is Google Maps wrong?

« on: January 15, 2022, 05:45:29 PM »

For those interested, this article gives a good overview of flight planning considerations for a N. Atlantic flight.

https://ops.group/blog/nat-tracks-nil-an-experiment/

74

Flat Earth Community / Re: Flat Earth maps?

« on: January 10, 2022, 11:24:54 AM »

Travel in the South can be tested, and there are various anomalies which are of interest: https://wiki.tfes.org/Flight_Anomalies

I've been an air traffic controller for 23 years, and I find nothing anomalous about air travel in the southern hemishpere. It's literally tested every day.

75

Flat Earth Theory / Re: Where is Google Maps wrong?

« on: January 02, 2022, 08:47:08 AM »

Hi,

Air Traffic Controller from the UK here.

Using LCY - JFK flights to illustrate journey time is not ideal for a few reasons.

It used the Airbus A318 aircraft which is usually a short haul aircraft (cruising speed of around Mach 0.78 compared to 777 or 787s at Mach 0.82 etc).

The flight would fly LCY to Shannon in Ireland, where it would refuel and the passengers would disembark and clear US customs so when they’d arrive in JFK it would be as a domestic flight.

The runway length at LCY was too short to allow an A318 to depart with enough fuel to get to JFK.

The return flight from JFK to LCY was direct without stopping.