@TannerSwett I've not voted, but physically it does not make sense. in a "perfect atmosphere" I seriously doubt you would have to pitch down manually. pretty sure gravity would take care of that for you
I don't think it really answers the question. The question is "if you really flew level wouldn't you fly off into space?" and your answer is "you have to keep making small adjustments to keep the same altitude anyway"
@Federico Well, I didn't mean to imply that the pilots would have to "manually" pitch down. Just that the aircraft would very gradually pitch down one way or another.
"Instead, they watch the altimeter, and raise or lower the nose as needed to maintain a constant altitude, or to climb or descend as necessary. (Or they set the autopilot to do the same thing.)"
Is that the part you're saying doesn't make sense?
@Federico I admit, then, I'm pretty confused. I thought "control your pitch in order to maintain altitude" was one of the fundamentals of flying an airplane. Isn't it?
@TannerSwett yes, but to see this effect, if it is there, you have to fly in absolutely perfect atmosphere
that's why I said I never paid any attention to it.
also "flying off into space" requires climbing, climbing needs thrust. If you don't touch the thrust, you won't "fly into space", hence the pilot needs not to correct for altitude, gravity is taking care of it
the only question that remain is if you need to take care of the pitch, or if the aerodynamic stability does that for you
You (the original asker) say that in order to follow the curvature of the earth, an airplane would have to pitch down. Is that correct? Well, fundamentally, the idea is correct, but you end up with the wrong conclusion.
Do airplanes pitch down over the course of a flight over the curved earth? Yes, they do.
Do the pilots need to purposely pitch down in order to follow the earth's curvature? When airplanes do this pitching down, do they do it in a way that the pilots or passengers would notice? No and no.
On Arqade, there's a policy that game identification questions without some sort of media from the game are off-topic, and with the number of questions affected, getting that policy settled was a huge pain in the neck for everyone involved.
I'm wondering whether Aviation should consider question...
Personally, my vote is that questions without artifacts should be off-topic, but I'm uncertain whether it's a change that needs to be made rather than being handled on a case-by-case basis.
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