Why don't planes fly over the Pacific?

[Xist]

I always thought that planes needed to stay near land, but it is shorter this way!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=00AT5h_sOQM

[jakobnev]

Because flat earth is real:

[Piotrsko]

Mostly because if you have a major problem you have somewhere to go. Not a lot of long runways in the area, much less large municipal airports.

Oops sorry, this was a logical answer.

[Phase]

I flew over it to New Zealand from Los Angeles

[freebeard]

Flattened Earth: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dymaxion_map

Showing the one-world ocean.

I tried to find a reference for the Crystal Planet theory that pre-dates Fuller's patent. Best I can do is:

link.springer.com: Published: 19 July 2012
Energy-Momentum Stability of Icosahedral Configurations of Point Vortices on a Sphere
Paul K. Newton & Vitalii Ostrovskyi

We investigate the nonlinear stability of the icosahedral relative equilibrium configuration of point vortices on a sphere. The relative equilibrium problem is formulated as a problem of finding the nullspace of the configuration matrix that encodes the geometry of the icosahedron
[snip]
we then combine our knowledge of the nullspace structure of A with the structure of the underlying Hamiltonian, and analyze the stability of the icosahedron using the energy-momentum method. Because the parameter space is large, we focus on the physically motivated and important case obtained by combining the basis elements into (i) the uniform icosahedron; (ii) a von Kármán vortex street configuration of equal and opposite staggered, evenly spaced latitudinal rows equidistant from the equator (Chamoun et al. in Phys. Fluids 21:116603, 2009), and (iii) the North Pole–South Pole equal and opposite vortex pair. Stability boundaries in a three-parameter space are calculated for linear combinations of these grouped basis configurations.

Easy peasy, amirite?

[cRiPpLe_rOoStEr]

Originally Posted by Piotrsko

Mostly because if you have a major problem you have somewhere to go. Not a lot of long runways in the area, much less large municipal airports.

The good ol' ETOPS rule. But anyway, now that twin-engined aircraft are allowed on trans-Atlantic flights which previously were flown only with 4-engined aircraft, makes me wonder if a (very-unlikely) grand comeback of the 4-engined aircraft would render a trans-Pacific flight technically/legally suitable.

[Piotrsko]

Mtbf of the jet engines is so ridiculously high along with the thrust levels that the plane will fly along on one engine just fine if one does fail. It's actually a certification requirement.
There are other failures that mandate the use of a landing strip, also after a while the passengers having percieved near death hissy fits while running on one is very grating to aircrew.
As long as the flames go out with the fuel off........

Old saying: the only time you have too much fuel is when the planes is on fire.

[cRiPpLe_rOoStEr]

Originally Posted by Piotrsko

Old saying: the only time you have too much fuel is when the planes is on fire.

It's often said the Chapecoense aircraft crash only had survivors because it had ran out of fuel prior to the crash, otherwise it would've exploded, and the (few, criticallly injured) survivors wouldn't be able to escape the flames.

[JSH]

The short answer is that planes do fly over the Pacific Ocean. United does a nonstop from SFO to MEL

[freebeard]

Nobody considers that the best way to 'sAvE tHe PlaNeT' is to just stay home.