Distance from New Zealand to the tip of South America

Hi there,

This was posted on the other forum (.net) and I thought it was quite interesting and compelling, and it seems to be quite hard to answer for the flat earth activists.

Essentially, on a round earth, the distance from Auckland, New Zealand to Puntas Arenas, Chile by plane is about 6000 miles - a flight time of just over 11 hours, with an airspeed of roughly 530mph.

This image shows a round earth diagram of it:


On a flat earth, the distance would obviously be closer to 30,000 miles, as this diagram shows:


(Thanks to Hob Impost)

Now, Tom Bishop argues a reason for this

 

To improve your example, you might ask about a non-stop flight from New Zealand to Chile.  This would avoid that pesky little stop over that makes the flight look like it takes 7 more hours than it does.  If I'm understanding your screenshot, it would take a little over 11 hours to fly from New Zealand to Chile.

Also, check out the Airbus A340 specifications.  Check out the "Range fully loaded" value.  This plane wouldn't even be able to complete a non-stop flight such as this, on a flat earth.  But yet, they're landing in Chile every day.  Could this be NASA's handy work?

Now look at cruising speed.  FE'ers believe the flat earth has the same diameter as our RE.  Which means the circumference of the flat earth is also the same, 24,900 miles.  If you put Australia on one side and Chile on the other, the shortest distance should be under 24900 / 2 = 12,450 miles.  Now divide that number by the faster of the two cruising speeds, give the FE'er a little benefit of the doubt, and you get a flight time of 12,450 miles / 564 mph = 22 hours, and that's if the plane refuels mid-flight and travels at its cruising speed 100% of the time.

I'm not quite sure I understand his POV, but he later argues that jet streams could allow the plane to reach distances much quicker than thought possible, although since pilots generally might be able to tell by their GPS systems that they were crossing distances hugely quicker than normal...

Anyway, an explanation by some flat earth believers would be much appreciated

Many thanks,


(Thread source: http://theflatearthsociety.net/forum/index.php?topic=288.0)

Well it's hardly compelling for me several reasons (primarily I can't verify it without spending a fair ammount of money, I don't even know if those maps are accurate as all they are are maps of a "round earth" that have been warped, and most importantly a discrepancy between what RET says is the distance of two points and what I've measured those two points as wasn't what convinced me that the earth was flat to begin with).

I know that might be annoying but several experiments I've observed have convinced me the earth is flat so all your argument does is show me that there is something more that needs to be explained in FET. I'll be honest and say I don't have the answer and I'm sure if you're honest you won't really care about any of my speculations (perhaps space is warped the further south you travel?) as that's all they'd be.

Again, sorry that didn't compell me but it doesn't really have anything to do with why I believe the earth is flat. However, I do agree it's interesting and if accurate does require an explanation - perhaps when you have realised the truth you could get to work on it.

Firstly, on international flights like this the pilots deliberately use jet streams to faster reach a destination. That is a known fact by anyone passingly familiar with long distance commercial aviation.

Secondly, your calculation for the distance on the FE map is completely off. That red line isn't 30,000 miles. It's more like under 12,000 miles. You can make a quick scale by knowing that Australia is 3,000 miles long. The distance of 12,000 miles on FE is about twice the distance of the RE estimate of 6,000 miles. This considered, in a jet stream the plane would only have to go twice as fast as it normally would to reach its destination on time. TheEngineer, a pilot who posts on this forum, has been on flights which have arrived in less than half the time they should have taken due to winds aloft.

Thirdly, the Jet Streams don't have to be perfect, constant, or work all the time. Those Southern Hemisphere airports have absolutely terrible delay ratings compared to their Northern counterparts (I wonder why). Here's a quote from a Forbes article titled The World's Most Delayed Airports:

"At Sao Paolo's Guarulhos and Congonhas International Airports only 41% and 43% of all flights, respectively, left on time, making them the third and fourth worst cities for departures. (Rio de Janeiro's main airport has roughly the same miserable departure reliability, though it didn't meet our criteria because of its relatively small size.) Sao Paolo is also one of the worst places in the world for arrivals. Just 54% of the flights at Congonhas and 59% of the flights at Guarulhos arrived as scheduled last year."

I'm not quite sure I understand his POV, but he later argues that jet streams could allow the plane to reach distances much quicker than thought possible, although since pilots generally might be able to tell by their GPS systems that they were crossing distances hugely quicker than normal...

How do you know that the plane's systems aren't recording a longer than normal distance traveled?

That seems to be a pretty big assumption. Do you have any logs to show us? Do you have any accounts or testimonials? Do you have anything beyond blind assumption to actually back up your lofty claim?