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.*
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Get a globe and a string. Put the ends of the string on any two cities. That will be the basic route an airplane will take. Some deviations for ATC corridors or jet stream boosts but that is basically it. And they do fly longitudinally. The straightest line between two points on a globe is a curve, and that curve goes very polar on long flights.
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