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
We do sometimes fly across the Northern polar regions to shorten trips. If you look at [live flights](https://flightaware.com/live/) at any given time, you’ll always see up to a couple dozen flying up to or down from the northern Arctic circle.
Flights stay over **established flight paths** for many reasons, including emergency response. If your plane goes down over Antarctica, there’s no chance you will be saved.
Those flight paths themselves take into account tons of factors (rotation of the Earth, predominant wind, where direct flights are in higher demand, population and infrastructure and more).
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