Recently, I came across couple of flat-earth
flyers. I have a whole series debunking every
point raised in Nathan Thompson’s version.
This series is on FlatEarth101 version; this
flyer has only three new points: the first
one being “Eye Don’t think so”: which
I have already covered.
The next one in list: Point six: Plane Flights;
Hundreds of flights every day make fuel stops
that make no sense on a globe… But, make
perfect sense on a Flat Earth. Every flight
goes to connection locations in the Northern
‘hemisphere’ first.
If you have seen some of my other videos:
you would know flying is a big passion for
me; and I get excited talking about it.
But being a moron; I initially didn’t look
at their map. I read the description, and
my first thought was flights from Australia
to South Africa. Why those two? Well those
are both in southern hemisphere and I have
actually been to South Africa to learn how
to dance. And of course, I found several direct
flights.
I can just leave it there, as their point
is already proven wrong. But where is the
fun in that, right?
There are many variables when it comes to
a flight route. I will just touch on a few.
First, of all, let’s understand that aviation
industry is a business; like every other business,
they are in it to make money. A lot of what
I am about to say would make perfect sense
if you can see it through that lens.
Planes lifespan are generally rated in cycles
– the number of times the plane takes off
and lands.
The Dreamliner is rated for 44,000 cycles
with a list price of 224.6 million USD. Boeing
747 uses approximately 1 gallon of fuel (about
4 litres) every second. Over the course of
a 10-hour flight, it might burn 36,000 gallons
(150,000 litres): pre-pandemic cost of jet-fuel
of around $2.91 a gallon: which brings us
to a total fuel-cost of 104,760 USD.
Which mean, a transatlantic flight is around
5,104 Dollar for the aircraft, and 20 times
more cost for the bloody fuel.
Because I love this subject so much: let me
torture you with a little bit of unrelated
information. There are three main types of
aircraft engine; Turboprop, Turbofan and Turbojet;
Each of them has a range of speeds when they
are most efficient.
Turboprop is the type of engine you will find
on most propeller aircraft; like my favourite
Cessna172; they are not very fast, and most
efficient between about 325 to 375 kilometre.
Turbofans are the engines you see almost everywhere.
Almost every commercial flights are Turbofan
driven, and older models were most efficient
between about 400 to 620 kilometre. But recent
aircraft can do around 926 kilometre.
Turbojets are the engines on military fighter
jet, where it’s truly efficient over 2080
kilometre.
An Airline business depends on how many people
it can transfer in the shortest amount of
time.
Our engine efficiency dictates what the maximum
speed we should be flying to burn least amount
of fuel.
All these variables leads to a simpler value:
a per-person fuel economy. This was one of
the reason why Concorde failed. Due to the
need for speed, the engine was Turbojet; which
has a huge fuel consumption; the design also
meant not many people can fit inside.
Which meant Concorde had a per-person fuel
economy of 14 miles-per-gallon compared to
Dreamliner 104 miles-per-gallon.
My point is: based on profit, we know what
the maximum speed is. Now to get them quickly
as possible, we ideally want the shortest
distance.
A line between two points in any shape is
the shortest distance. That should be it;
right?
Well, not quite. Let’s not jump ahead.
Though extremely rare, aircraft can still
have malfunctions. It is just a part of life:
in fact air travel is safer than road travel.
But still, when you are up there, and maybe
an engine has stopped working… trust me,
it can get real stressful. Let’s not talk
about all the passengers in the back. They
know what they have signed up for.
This is one of the reason, when we create
our flight plan, even before getting anywhere
near the aircraft: we tend to keep close to
Airports. At times these routes can also double
up for refuelling or even transfer, so the
crew can get some rest.
But it is a very delicate dance. Did you know
that airliners have to pay the airport to
use the facility? So to have a stop or a route
that doesn’t generate enough incomes: well,
suppose you are “Jeff Smisek”, CEO of
an airline and you also happen to have a friend
called… say “David Samson”, who also
is the chairman of the Port Authority in New
Jersey. Now David happens to have a beautiful
gateway home in Aiken, South Carolina that
was only three minutes drive from his local
Columbia Metropolitan Airport. But the flight
from his work in Newark, New Jersey would
only fly him to “Charlotte Douglas International
Airport” that was a painful 2 hours drive
away from his home.
You need some funding to extend the subway
to Newark to make United’s hub airport easier
to reach for passengers; well, you add a new
flight from Newark International to Columbia
only once a week; leaving on Thursday evening
and returning on Monday. Surprise, surprise:
New Jersey port authority soon granted United’s
request for subway extension.
Now as one might have guessed: there weren’t
many people in Newark with multi-million dollar
mansion in Aiken, South Carolina; neither
there were many who wanted to fly to Newark
every Monday. This flight ended up in the
bottom 3% of all commercial flights in US;
transporting around 25 passengers on a good
day, while burning 3,000 gallons of jet fuel
for every round trip.
So, it’s basically math that dictates if
we will find a direct route, or not.
Now we covered the business angle, let’s
move to the science portion of this video.
First allow me to say the most mundane sentence
ever: “3D is 3D and 2D is 2D”… is it
really that hard to understand? There is a
difference.
First, we can’t project a 3D Earth map onto
a 2D paper or image without some compromises;
our map projections can be classified into
three types: Gnomonic projection, Stereographic
projection and Orthographic projection: each
with their own pros and cons.
By actual name rather than types: well, we
are mostly familiar with Mercator created
by Flemish cartographer Gerardus Mercator
in 1569 – a time when Antarctica hadn’t
even been discovered. Mercator was designed
as a navigational tool for sailors.
The joke with Mercator is: when most projection
tries to fix one kind of distortion, it increases
another kind. However, Mercator is one of
those rare maps whose answer to latitudinal
distortion was to ensure that the longitudinal
distortion is equally bad!
On a Mercator projection, Greenland is roughly
the same size as Africa. In reality, Africa
is almost 14 times larger, and Greenland can
fit inside China no less than four times.
The map also suggests that Scandinavian countries
are larger than India, whereas, India is actually
three times the size.
My next objection: can we stop being a northern
hemisphere chauvinist pigs. We normally decide
to view with north being up. I talked about
this on another video; and it’s more historical
tradition that kept it up till this day. We
can equally view the earth with south being
top; or east; or west.
Hell, we can even view the earth from above
north-pole. Though I admit it would mean we
couldn’t see one hemisphere.
So one has to understand that we are talking
about 3D object and where we are viewing it
from.
Enough talking: time for some actual demonstrations.
Well first, let’s look at a flight from
Los Angeles LAX to all the way to Tokyo - Narita
NRT. I have flown this route couple of times
in a simulator, and the average flight time
is 11 hours and 42 minutes.
This is what I see on any flight-route web-site…
what the hell is going on? Aargh; those flat-earthers
were right….
Well, were they?
So this map is obviously Mercator, and if
we draw a straight line, it should look like
this. And this is when north is up.
What happens if we change our viewpoint. Instead
of looking at the earth straight on, let’s
change to a view where both LAX and NRT is
near the middle of the screen. As you can
see, we are in Google Earth, and I have actually
drawn a path between them. And you can see,
from this angle: it looks pretty straight.
That straight line we saw in Mercator map:
in fact that is the one that is curved.
Finally, I should look at their original map;
just to be fair. The point in Australia is
easy: it is Sydney; but the other end is a
bit confusing. I am pretty sure it is Chile;
now I have nothing against Chile, but there
are far more popular tourist destination like
Brazil just next to it.
As far as I know, Chile has one internation
airport: Arturo Merino Benítez International
Airport also known as Santiago International
Airport and Nuevo Pudahuel Airport. There
about 125 airports creating a very serviceable
network with flights to just about all of
them from the International Airport.
Unfortunately, Santiago is no where near where
that route ends in their map. I can only guess
it to be near Puerto Montt; which is a port
city in southern Chile’s Lake District,
known as a gateway to the Andes mountains
and the Patagonian fjords.
And it does have Marcel Marchant Airport – have
a look.
Next stop: finding out if there is a direct
flight from SYD to SCL; well, I got a
daily flight with LATAM Airlines, Qantas;
on a Boeing 787-9; with a route distance of
11401 km and flight time of 12 hours 35 minutes.
Plugin a cruising speed of 913 km for a typical
Boeing 787; it gives us a total time of 12
hours 24 minutes;
In all seriousness: do these flat-earth flyers
expect nobody to do any research; even a super
easy google search for actual flights?
When I started this video, I expected it to
be super short. Maybe one screenshot showing
the flight. Then it seems to have snowballed.
The initial idea was to combine it with Jet
Stream claim: as it does impact flights. Now
looking at the length, maybe not to great
details.
So there will a video coming within the next
couple of days when I really go over Jet streams.
A very short summary here: but with my real
life experiences.
I used to go to Latvia very often over the
last 10 years. Initially it was once every
month for two weeks. During the year: at times
I would get to Riga quicker than other times.
At times, it would take longer for me to get
back to UK: I do mean flight time.
Now suppose the pilot is not flying the plane
faster during those months: so, what other
variables might cause this?
I hope you know the answer from my prelude.
Jet streams are relatively narrow bands of
strong wind in the upper atmosphere: and at
the altitude used by most aircraft. And due
to Earth’s rotation, these streams blows
from west to east and the flow often shifts
to the north and south.
Riga is east from UK; that’s all the hints
you will get.
Depending on the situation, pilot may still
use full speed while having the tail-wind:
it might be to make up for lost time. But
if possible, commercial aircraft would reduce
the speed to reduce fuel consumptions.
Pilots have used jet streams since 1952, when
a Pan Am flight flew from Tokyo to Honolulu
at 25,000 feet in order to take advantage
of one.
By flying in a jet stream, planes travelling
from west to east get a significant boost
from the tailwind, which saves time and fuel.
Conversely, planes flying in the opposite
direction lose time and expend more fuel by
flying into the headwind a jet stream produces,
and pilots usually adjust their flying altitude
to avoid them.
The day-to-day fluctuations in the position,
intensity and size of jet streams often necessitate
last-minute flight plan modifications before
a long-distance flight takes off in the middle
latitudes.
Flying in the a westerly direction across
the Atlantic – Europe to US – can take
significantly longer when the jet stream is
at its peak and headwinds are bellowing from
west to east across the ocean. Flights sometimes
take an unusual route to avoid this – such
as flying closer to Greenland, rather than
heading due west across the Atlantic.
So at times, we actually ignore the direct
line again to save fuel; as we understand,
straightest route may not often be the least
fuel consuming.
I seriously hope I have covered the common
misconception. TLDR: there are direct flights
over southern hemisphere. Next, drawing a
straight line in a map projection doesn’t
mean it is a straight line in a sphere. Finally,
there are economical reason that might cause
an airline to choose a non-straight line route.
Done.
That’s all for this video. Thank you so
much for watching. If you have enjoyed this
content: well, a like and a comment won’t
go amiss. If you would also subscribe for
future contents like this: it would definitely
help my small channel grow and would be thoroughly
appreciated.
Have a safe day; signing off.
