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« on: February 13, 2018, 04:51:09 PM »
In some versions of the flat Earth theory, the distance between Sydney and Santiago is such that a subsonic airliner would take about 40 hours to make the journey. This contrasts with the less than 13 hours for the advertised schedules. The reality of such flights would be a serious problem for those versions of the theory. The approach that seems to be adopted by flag Earth believers is that these flights do not in fact exist, or take a lot more than the claimed time.
So, the question is, assuming that the flights do exist and do take the advertised time, how could this be proved to the flat Earth believers?
Even if a flat Earth believer takes such a flight, and then accepts that the journey took less than 13 hours, and assuming they accept that the aircraft they flew in is not capable of supersonic flight, they would be just one person. If they subsequently announce that they've seen proof that the Earth is not flat, it seems likely that others would simply claim that the person had been tricked, bribed, or cooerced into making the announcement.
A widely accepted proof about these flights would have to take a form that could be checked by each individual to be convinced. I'm having difficulty thinking of anything that would fit that requirement. Even videos are potentially suspect these days, given the extent to which they can be modified by anyone with sufficient resources.
Perhaps the Sydney to Santiago flight argument is a dead-end, not because it's wrong, but because there's no way of proving that it's right to people who are determined to disbelieve it.