If it takes a day to fly to Australia, why don't planes fly up and wait twelve hrs for Australia to arrive?

Answer 1

If you jump up, where do you land? Do you land 10cm from where you started due to the earth rotating underneath you, or do you come down in the same place?

The answer is of course that you come down in the same place. Though you don't normally realise it, you are moving round and round, with the earth spinning. You don't lose that speed when you jump off the earth, you keep it. So you keep moving, and the earth keeps moving, and so you land in the same place.

The same of course applies to aeroplanes, so they need to move around the earth rather than just going straight up.

Answer 2

To those saying you could fly up in "space" and it would work because there is no air: no, it wouldn't. While you sit on your chair, you are rotating at the same speed as earth. If you jump straight up, notice that you don't slam into the wall-- that is because you retain the tangential velocity from earth's spinning. If you run, you go at the speed (earth's rotation speed) + (your running speed). This has nothing to do with air.
If a plane flew up, perhaps even into the vacuum right above earth (lets say a suborbital), it is still going at a velocity = (earth's rotational speed + plane speed). This is not exactly true, but I don't want to go into orbital mechanics, parabolic or otherwise, right now. It's close enough.

Answer 3

The Earth's gravitational pull prevent this from being possible short of going into actual space, far enough to be in orbit. While the concept is possible, it would prohibitively expensive to do so. An example... A helicopter can hover (planes cannot) over one place. The Earth will rotate, but the helicopter will go with it, not rotate under the chopper and allow it to land in a new place without any forward motion. Hope you understand that!

Answer 4

As others said, the atmosphere generally moves along with the surface of the earth. But you could launch a balloon or blimp and ride the trade winds for 'free'. Problem is, it would take a lot longer than 12 hours, and the trade winds might not be going where you want to go. Sailing is also fun, but also takes a long time.

Answer 5

They do certainly fly east. Your flight is merely approximately 14 rather hours of flight; something of the time in transit is by using the numerous time zones you bypass. that's available to bypass the alternative course--- San Francisco or l. a. to London then directly to Sydney, case in point, yet i do no longer understand of a single airline that should take you the completed way. you may could desire to blend airlines, like fly San Fran to London on United then take Thai or Singapore something of how.

Answer 6

I am going to answer this question, assuming you are serious. Planes fly in the atmosphere. The atmosphere rotates with the earth. So planes have to move relative the atmosphere to move relative to the ground.

Answer 7

I think its a really good question. But like someone else said, the atmosphere moves with the earth so the plane has to move through the atmosphere. Good question though. I'll bet you thought you were onto something. :-)

Answer 8

That's a very good idea you've got there. Think of It, no need for land fill sights, just take all our rubbish aloft, wait 12 hours then dump It, brilliant.

Answer 9

assuming we could make planes hover like helicopters, they'd still rotate with atmosphere, so we must make them escape Earth gravity to wait for australia outside our atmosphere :P i guess it's a lot easier to travel to australia :)

nice question though, i like clever people ;)

Answer 10

why not just jump up,wait until the earth moves until your over Australia, land and save the air fare.