[Oli Barro]

I am obviously brand new here. I don't believe in a flat earth, but I'm intrigued by the reasoning. This is clearly well-thought-out.

I read the FAQ and followed up with browsing some of the forums and I didn't see my question addressed.

I grew up in a U.S. military family and have seen my fair share of international travel. Looking at the generally agreed upon pole-centric map, I can't figure out where to fit some things.

A flight from New York to London takes 7 hours. Los Angeles to Tokyo (the flight I took most often) averaged 20 hours. Stuff in the northern hemisphere all lines up well with the map. The LA-Tokyo flight on the map looks to be over twice as far as NY-London, so the times line up.

But the "southern hemisphere" on the map gets all wonky. On the map, the distance from Johannesburg, South Africa to Buenos Aires in Argentina looks to be twice as distant as the LA-Tokyo flight, but flying from Buenos Aires to Johannesburg only takes 16 hours, and that's even with a layover in Brazil. If you can manage a direct flight, you can usually cover that distance in 9 or 10 hours.

I get that the flat earth maps are only approximations, but that's a sizable discrepancy. I assume I'm not the first person to ask about this, but there's so much flat earth info available, I found myself a little overwhelmed and never did figure out the answer.

So my question is how does flat earth theory account for the flight times to and from various locations on the earth that take much more (or much less) time in real life than flat earth maps would suggest?

[xenotolerance]

This thread addresses your question pretty thoroughly. There are more past threads you can find with a forum search.

I would summarize it as, flat Earth belief does not have an explanation, but instead disputes the reported flight times.

[TomInAustin]

I am obviously brand new here. I don't believe in a flat earth, but I'm intrigued by the reasoning. This is clearly well-thought-out.

I read the FAQ and followed up with browsing some of the forums and I didn't see my question addressed.

I grew up in a U.S. military family and have seen my fair share of international travel. Looking at the generally agreed upon pole-centric map, I can't figure out where to fit some things.

A flight from New York to London takes 7 hours. Los Angeles to Tokyo (the flight I took most often) averaged 20 hours. Stuff in the northern hemisphere all lines up well with the map. The LA-Tokyo flight on the map looks to be over twice as far as NY-London, so the times line up.

But the "southern hemisphere" on the map gets all wonky. On the map, the distance from Johannesburg, South Africa to Buenos Aires in Argentina looks to be twice as distant as the LA-Tokyo flight, but flying from Buenos Aires to Johannesburg only takes 16 hours, and that's even with a layover in Brazil. If you can manage a direct flight, you can usually cover that distance in 9 or 10 hours.

I get that the flat earth maps are only approximations, but that's a sizable discrepancy. I assume I'm not the first person to ask about this, but there's so much flat earth info available, I found myself a little overwhelmed and never did figure out the answer.

So my question is how does flat earth theory account for the flight times to and from various locations on the earth that take much more (or much less) time in real life than flat earth maps would suggest?

This has been covered but you hit on the most obvious proof that any accurate flat earth map is not possible.

[juner]

This has been covered but you hit on the most obvious proof that any accurate flat earth map is not possible.

You are adding absolutely nothing to the thread with this. Warned. Next one is timeout to review the rules.

[ShowmetheProof]

It is interesting.  I wonder if this is how they think airlines started?
NASA:  We need you to help with the cover-up of the earth.  You will instruct your pilots flying flights in the northern hemisphere to fly in circles for huge amounts of time.
Airline Manager:  Uh.. but we-
NASA:  Guards!  Bring in the replacement!
AM:  What replacement?
NASA:  He looks like you, but will help us cover-up the FE.
AM:  Noooooooooooooooo!

[JohnAdams1145]

Well, FE acknowledges that their map isn't perfect, and there's a lot of debate within FE about which map to use. What RE needs to show is not that the AE map is wrong on distance, it's that we have enough distance measurements between 4 points to ascertain that no flat map can have these distances together.

[AATW]

Well, FE acknowledges that their map isn't perfect, and there's a lot of debate within FE about which map to use. What RE needs to show is not that the AE map is wrong on distance, it's that we have enough distance measurements between 4 points to ascertain that no flat map can have these distances together.

This was done at some length in this thread.

https://forum.tfes.org/index.php?topic=6633.0

Tom started by putting the numbers into a triangle calculator and saying that because the angles added up to 180 the earth must be flat.
Of course, all a triangle calculator does is tell you the angles of a triangle on a flat plane given 3 side lengths which it can always do if the 3 lengths are such that they make a triangle.
When that was pointed out he started claiming that the distance from NY to Paris was unknown and that no-one accurately knows how fast planes fly anyway.