 This is shown on Fig. II.4, where the left-hand side shows routes on a spherical Earth between Madrid and Auckland with intermediate stops in Los Angeles, Buenos Aires and Santiago. We expect the travel times to be nearly equal for all three paths.
On the other hand, for a flat Earth the distances traveled would be very different (see the right side of Fig. II.4). Thus the Flat-Earth model predicts flight times to be extremely different for different paths. Here are flight times for six different routes:
• Auckland–Santiago–Madrid: 11h 0m + 12h 40m = 23.67 hours
• Auckland–Buenos Aires–Madrid: 11h 45m + 11h 35m = 23.33 hours
• Auckland–Los Angeles–Madrid: 12h 15m + 11h 5m = 23.33 hours
• Auckland–Tokyo–Madrid: 11h 0m + 14h 10m = 25.17 hours
• Auckland–Shenzen–Madrid: 11h 45m + 14h 0m = 25.75 hours
• Auckland–Perth–Doha–Madrid: 7h 25m + 11h 50m + 7h 15m = 26.5 hours
The flight times are nearly the same, in agreement with the spherical Earth prediction, and completely contradicting the Flat-Earth expectation. The same is true for the Shanghai – Buenos Aires approximate antipodal pair.
In the Flat-Earth theory that we are reviewing, Antarctica does not exist. At the southernmost latitude, Flat-Earthers allege that there is an ice wall that stretches around the entire outer boundary of Earth’s disc. There are many testable ramifications of this Flat-Earth claim.
First, it would be impossible to fly over the South Pole (since there is no such entity). Flat-Earthers will assert that no one has ever flown over the South Pole, or across Antarctica. They also claim that no one has ever circumnavigated the globe, passing over or across both the North Pole and the South Pole in the process. Unfortunately for them, these statements are false. There have been several trips around the earth that passed over both Poles, some by air and some by land. Fig. II.5 shows a few of these.
Here are a few examples. The precise routes that were followed can be found here, with their description.
“Between November 14-17, 1965, Capt. Fred Lester Austin, Jr. and Harrison Finch took off from Honolulu, Hawaii, circumnavigated the Earth through both the poles, and returned to Honolulu. In 1977, PanAm Flight 50 circumnavigated the Earth through the North and South Pole in order to celebrate PanAm’s 50th anniversary. In 1979, Sir Ranulph Fiennes and Charles R. Burton set out from Greenwich, England to the South Pole, and then headed north to the North Pole and back to Greenwich. The Guinness Book of World Records lists this as the first surface polar circumnavigation. In 1988-1989, Dick Smith circumnavigated the globe passing over both poles using a Twin Otter plane. In 1992, Michael Palin made a documentary for the BBC featuring his travel from the Arctic to the South Pole [this was not strictly a circumnavigation, but Palin started from one pole and ended up at the other]. In 2009, the TAG Transpolar08 flight circumnavigated the Earth through the North and South Pole, at the same time breaking the speed record, with an average speed of 822.8 km/h. On July 9-11 2019, commemorating the Apollo Moon landing, the One More Orbit team broke the polar circumnavigation record using the Gulfstream G650ER aircraft.”
Flat Earthers assert that no one has ever crossed Antarctica since there is no such continent. However, several expeditions have accomplished this feat. These are shown in Fig. II.6 below. Furthermore, many scientific experiments and teams are currently installed in Antarctica.
Of course, Flat Earthers assert that these people were only fooling themselves, and were in fact traveling in circles. We understand there will be a Flat-Earth cruise in 2020 to see “the ice wall.” We don’t know quite what they have in mind. Certainly, at many points Antarctica appears as a large wall of ice, so sailing up near an ice cliff is hardly “proof” of an ice wall surrounding a flat Earth. By the way, the ship the Flat-Earthers will sail on uses GPS for guidance. GPS is governed by a set of satellites distributed around the (spherical) globe; and GPS assumes the Earth