s on the map state quite clearly that it is a “North Polar Azimuthal Equidistant Projection,” that is, a projection of the spheroidal Earth onto a plane with the North Pole as its center, and with the lines of latitude as concentric circles about the North Pole.
As is well known, it is impossible to project a sphere onto a plane without distortions, or without cutting the sphere in various places. In this case, the Southern Hemisphere is seriously distorted, and the distortions become progressively larger as one approaches the South Pole.
On a spherical globe, the distance between adjacent lines of longitude increases as one travels from the North Pole to the Equator. The distance between lines of longitude then decreases as one moves from the Equator to the South Pole; at the South Pole the lines of longitude again converge at a point. On this North Pole Azimuthal Equidistant map, the distance between lines of longitude continues to increase until one reaches the South Pole. This means that the distance between points in the Southern Hemisphere appears much greater on a Flat Earth map than on a globe.
On a Flat Earth map, countries in the Southern Hemisphere appear much larger than Northern Hemisphere countries. For example, on the map above South Africa appears to be similar in size to the U.S., while in reality South Africa has less than 15% the surface area of the U.S. Australia appears to be 3 or 4 times as large as the United States while it is actually about 80% as large.
Furthermore, paths on the flat Earth (particularly in the Southern Hemisphere) that lie along a “straight line” are nowhere near a straight line on a globe. This is illustrated in Fig. II.2. In a flat-Earth depiction (L side of Fig. II.2), the three cities Sydney (Australia), Los Angeles (California), and Santiago (Chile) lie nearly in a straight line. This suggests that the duration of flights from Sydney to Santiago (or vice versa) should be the same as the sum of the Sydney — LA flight time plus the LA — Santiago time.
However, if we compare those flight times on a globe (the right side of Fig. II.2), we see two things. First, the direct Sydney – Santiago flight time of 12 hours 40 minutes is much less than the sum of the Sydney – LA and LA – Santiago times (13 hr 50 minutes and 10 hr 45 minutes, respectively). Furthermore, the Sydney – Santiago flight route goes nowhere near the U.S.
Flat-Earthers claim that flights between cities in the Southern Hemisphere always make intermediate stops in the Northern Hemisphere. This is because distances between Southern Hemisphere cities get extremely large in the Flat-Earth picture, and because on Flat-Earth maps, many Southern Hemisphere routes go across the Northern Hemisphere, as with the Sydney – Santiago flights shown in the Flat-Earth map on the left side of Fig. II.2.
Contrary to assertions by Flat-Earthers, there are several direct flights between Southern-Hemisphere cities, as shown in Fig. II.3. By the way, you might be shocked that Flat-Earthers would falsely make claims that can be easily fact-checked. However, Flat-Earthers regularly make such statements. They will flatly (LOL 😊) make statements that are demonstrably false. Presumably this makes an impression on their fellow true believers.
The solid lines in Fig. II.3 all represent existing non-stop flights originating and terminating in Southern Hemisphere cities. On a Flat Earth, these cities would be so far apart that planes could not make the journey without stopping to refuel.
Continuing our discussion of flights, let’s look at airline flights between antipodal cities, or cities that lie on nearly opposite sides of the globe. Two cities that are nearly antipodal pairs are Auckland, New Zealand and Madrid, Spain (another example is Shanghai, China and Buenos Aires, Argentina). On a spherical Earth, if we fly in a “great circle” route between Auckland and Madrid, the travel distance should be about the same for all routes. Thus, the time should be approximately the same for any flights from Auckland to Madrid with a single stop en route.