do planes have to keep tilting down for long flights to make up for the earth’s curvature?

Question

this is a common argument made by flat-earhters, I want to be able to refute it

In: Physics

Answer 1

>ELI5: do planes have to keep tilting down for long flights to make up for the earth’s curvature?

>this is a common argument made by flat-earhters, I want to be able to refute it

You can’t refute it. It is true. However, the angle of tilt is so slight it is drowned out by the noise of normal flight variances. Updrafts, winds, turbulence, movement of the center of mass as passengers move about and as fuel is expended, even the trembling of the pilot’s hands, and the thermal expansion and contraction of parts of the plane – all of these swamp and overwhelm the minor correction needed to compensate for the Earth’s curvature. The pilot continuously and subconsciously compensates for it as she continuously compensates for a thousand other factors.

It’s like a car on a straight, level, road. The road surface is not flat, but tilts away from the center to drain away rainwater. A car travelling along the road will naturally drift off the road because of that tilt, yet the driver continuously and subconsciously compensates for it.