For example, if I were in Tangier, Morocco, and wanted to fly to Whangarei, New Zealand (the antipode on the globe) – wouldn’t it be about the same time to go up instead of across?
ETA: Thanks so much for the detailed explanations!
For those who are wondering why I picked Tangier/Whangarei, it was just a hypothetical! The-Minmus-Derp explained it perfectly: *Whangarei and Tangier airports are antipodes to the point that the runways OVERLAP in that way – if you stand on the right part if the Tangier runway, you are exactly opposite a part of the Whangarei runway, making it the farthest possible flight.*
In: 2270
My dad was a test pilot for NASA. He did lots of long-distance flights. I asked him how they choose their routes, and he grabbed a rubber band and took me to our globe. We put the ends of the rubber band on each end of the route, and that’s the path they take, more or less. The shortest distance possible (with considerations for emergencies etc as others have noted.)
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