Flight paths Memes

Someone clearly skipped their high school geometry classes. Flying higher doesn't mean traveling in a triangle! The Earth is curved, so the shortest path between two points is actually a great circle route (geodesic), not whatever this bizarre triangular flight path suggests. If pilots actually flew like this diagram, we'd all have enough time to watch the entire Lord of the Rings trilogy—extended editions—before landing. The real kicker? Even if this were true, the Pythagorean theorem is sobbing in the corner right now because those distances don't remotely add up. Next they'll tell us planes need to dodge the firmament.