I was on a flight looking down at the cars on the highway and it hit me, like the higher you go the higher the radius is to cover the same distance as ground transportation. I’m sure there’s a cool reason and history. To make up for the extra fuel to get up that high and the extra miles added. Anyone? Does it have to do with less air pressure. And the efficiency aerodynamic wise? Or noise pollution? Visual pollution? I just always took it as a non ask, “We’re this high, cuz we’re in a plane. Duh”
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I don’t know all the reasons, but I can say it’s partly for traffic control. At least in Canada, there’s standardizations that depending whether you’re flying west or east, you fly at odds or evens numbers of thousands of feet (don’t remember which is which). Because smaller planes often don’t have pressurized cabins and emergency systems to fly up higher in the atmosphere, those heights are used by larger planes.
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