Another completely stupid argument flat-earthers think is some kind of "gotcha!"

One of the favorite stupid arguments that flat-earthers love to make is that if the Earth were a globe, that would mean that airplanes would need to be constantly pitching down in order to follow the Earth's surface.

This argument is stupid and hilarious because they seem to have some kind of problem with the notion that yes, indeed, airplanes do pitch constantly down when flying even slightly longer distances. I don't even understand what the problem is, or why they think that's a problem.

(Well, actually, like I explain in this other blog post, I do know why they have a problem with it, and that's because they think that "constantly pitching down" requires the pilot to be constantly pushing on the yoke of the airplane. They don't understand that's not how airplanes maintain altitude. Airplanes maintain a particular altitude above the surface using the autopilot, which itself mostly uses trimming, not the main control surfaces. Even if the pilot were flying manually he, too, would be using trimming to maintain altitude, not the main control surfaces. And these trim tabs do indeed cause the airplane to be constantly "pitching down" to follow the Earth's surface, in order to maintain a particular altitude.)

I somewhat less popular "gotcha!" argument that some of them have is the claim that if you are at a latitude of, say, about 45 degrees, and you drive constantly east, for instance, that would mean that you would need to be constantly turning left in order to follow the latitude line.

Once again, same thing: Yes, that's indeed the case. So what? What exactly is the problem? Why do they think this is some kind of problem and a "gotcha" argument?

Of course if you are driving a car, assuming there was an enormously long road that follows the latitude line exactly, the curve towards the left is so microscopically small that you would hardly even notice. The absolutely minuscule correction towards the left would be completely overwhelmed by all the other corrections in direction that need to be constantly applied when driving a car. You wouldn't even notice.

Even if you were flying an extremely fast match-5 military plane, and you wanted to follow the latitude line exactly, then it would indeed need to be constantly curving slightly to the left. So what? What's the problem? (And, just like with the pitching down, this would be done mainly with trimming, not with the yoke, which controls the main control surfaces.)

Flat-earthers seem to think that according to the globe model the Earth is a small ball of just a few kilometers and thus you would notice such things clearly.