Flight paths displayed on the seatback screens look like massive curves because mapping a three-dimensional globe onto a two-dimensional flat screen heavily distorts the actual travel line.

Why the Shortest Route Bends North on a Map

A plane’s route can look like a broad arc on a seatback screen because the Earth is round and the screen is flat. The shortest path between two places on a globe follows a great circle: a circle whose center is the same as Earth’s center. On a flat map, that route usually cannot be drawn as a straight line without distorting the map.

For a New York–London flight, the great-circle path heads north, crossing the North Atlantic near Greenland. It may look longer than a straight line drawn across the screen, but that comparison is misleading: the screen’s straight line does not represent the shortest surface route on Earth.

Flattening the Globe Changes What You See

Map projections—the mathematical methods used to turn a globe into a flat image—stretch some areas and directions. A common projection makes longitude lines appear parallel, even though they meet at the poles on the globe. That makes many great-circle routes look curved, especially routes between places at similar latitudes.

The displayed arc is therefore not a detour caused by the screen, nor does it mean the airplane is tracing a curve through the air in the same way the line appears on the map. It is the map’s way of showing a shortest route over a curved surface.

The Flight May Still Deviate

The great-circle path is a geographic baseline, not a guarantee of the exact track flown. Winds, weather, air-traffic control, and other operational needs can shift a flight’s route. Even so, the northward sweep on the screen often reflects a real feature of globe geometry: the shortest way across the Atlantic can be farther north than a flat map suggests.