Originally Posted by
RealHJ
Thank You for the insight. This is very informative and reminds me (and others here) to really consider the shortest route in geographic terms and not confine thinking to the typical globe or map view (as this would be really flying over the arctic for the shortest route, as you've shown here, which is hard to fathom if one looks at the typical map view of the world).
Well actually, one can confine oneself to thinking in terms of a typical globe. It is when we think of the Earth as flat that we arrive at misunderstandings or when we assume that the globe has a top and a bottom rather than simply a north and south which are based on rotation and magnetic direction and that neither north nor south nor east nor west is the top - for there is no top, except the edge of the atmosphere.
Many, however, are all too soon to think that the shortest air route is the shortest straight line between two point. Often the shortest route deviates based on wind. The straight line is only shortest when there is no wind.