"xerj" wrote in message
...
I was talking about Coriolis effect with someone and he asked me about
planes against or with the earth's spin of around 1000mph at the equator.
He asked why this didn't benefit east to west plane travel timewise and
hurt west to east. I couldn't give him a straight answer, and felt like an
idiot when I said "it just doesn't".

What IS the straight answer? The dropping something in a moving vehicle
analogy doesn't work, does it? A plane has a method of acceleration,
whereas a passively dropped object doesn't.

Sometimes really simple questions can give you the worst time.


How about the fact the air the plane is flying through also is traveling
West to East. You are flying into a 1000 mph West to East headwind :-) A
100 mph airplane is flying backwards at 900 mph.

Danny Dot