45)  ”On a ball-Earth, Johannesburg, South Africa to Perth, Australia should be a straight shot over the Indian Ocean with convenient re-fueling possibilities on Mauritus or Madagascar. In actual practice, however, most Johannesburg to Perth flights curiously stop over either in Dubai, Hong Kong or Malaysia all of which make no sense on the ball, but are completely understandable when mapped on a flat Earth.”

 A similar one, but with different cities.

Via Great Circle Mapper.

So, now it is about Johannesburg to Perth. Let's look at the great circle route, to the right.

Do they fly it? Looks like it [Click on South Africa.to]. Even googling the direct flight path, adding in zero stops, gives you a clear result. 

I think we should stress here that airlines fly whichever route is financially feasible. For airplanes, this generally means that the plane has to be filled.

via [Wall Street Journal]

It is for that reason that airplanes regularly overbook by about 10%. It's about the amount of passengers that ultimately don't show. Sometimes, this means they will have some passengers that can't board. These will get a compensation. This happened to me on my flight from Amsterdam to Geneva, for L'ecole des Physique des Houches. I missed one single introduction lecture, but got free lunch, some money (which ultimately was spend towards books, boxes for the tv and a new tablet).

So, what do they spend the money on? Well, first look at the infographic on the left. I hadn't expected to find such a conceptually simple visual overview, but I did - and extremely fast, too. It was the third result on google?

As for the question of how non-stop flights are chosen, we'll turn to that in #46.

Thanks, Daimonie