If one is not in the business of mapping long dist

If one is not in the business of mapping long distance airplane and ship courses,it really is counter intuitive because we are used to using 2 dimensional maps-

which misrepresent a straight line or at least intuitively the shortest distance on the globe from Ensenada to Ningpo as being on a line from 31*N Ensenada to 29.8* N Ningpo-

without taking into consideration the spherical earth curvature- and I was of course using 2 dimensional maps to plot the coordinates-all nautical and terrestrial maps are 2 dimensional no matter how hard they try to compensate

E.g if a hiker wanted to hike from point A to point B but a very tall mountain (representing the earths spherical nature) exactly bisected the linear route,as long as the mountain wasnt extremely wide-it would be a shorter distance to partially walk around the mountain rather than climbing straight up to the peak on a 2 dimensional linear line

thats what the ships are doing in heading towards Alaska rather than climbing the very very high mountain of the earths curvature-as the circumference is greater as you approach the equator

maps would represent a straight linear ocean crossing between 2 points w similar latitudes as being along the ca 31* N latitude line-and from my quick reading of the def of a great circle as bisecting the center of the earth lat and long lines would qualify