One of the first things aspiring pilots learn is straight-and-level flight, a technique that involves maintaining control of a plane while staying at the same altitude and flying in one direction.
A recent Facebook post, though, claims straight-and-level flight supports the long-debunked theory that the Earth is flat.
“Airplanes will fly for hours at the same altitude, never dipping their nose down to follow the curve of the Earth,” says the narrator of a video in the Oct. 6 post.
The same claim appeared in an Instagram post that accumulated more than 3,000 likes before it was deleted.
The narrator describes a hypothetical flight from Portland, Oregon, to Seoul, South Korea, claiming such a trip would require a plane to fly “so far around the Earth that it’s flying downwards, with its nose vertically downwards" and “around the curve of the Earth so that the airplane is now flying upside down.”
“It would have to make that kind of flight path on a globe, which is such an absurdity,” the narrator says.
But this line of thinking is nonsense. Straight-and-level flight doesn't refer to a literal straight line through the air. Instead, it's based on keeping a consistent altitude and direction.
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