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
This is the concept of small circles and great circles. The shortest distance between 2 points on a globe is a great circle. If you got a map globe and stretched a string between 2 points on it that would be the shortest distance. it would also be a part of a huge line that was the circumference of the world. If the 2 points were both on the equator it would be obvious to see that line or if they were on a line of longitude you could easily follow it. But if they were not on the equator and still were at the same line of latitude as each other following the line of latitude would be a smaller circle but not the shortest distance.
Latest Answers