Probably not, but it should make you mad to know that even if you did want to, you can't.

That route would go almost directly over the South Pole, and, with the exception of super-specialized sightseeing flights, there aren't any commercial flights that us regulars can go on that fly anywhere near the pole.

Why?

Well, there are a few reasons.

The first problem with flying over Antarctica is pretty intuitive—it's cold.

Cold enough, in fact, that in March of 2001, the FAA put in place special rules governing what are called polar routes—any plane or magical sleigh flying above 78 degrees north or below 60 degrees south.

Now, I could just read the rules off of this really long PDF I found on the Boeing website, but I don't really feel like doing that, so I'm just going to play this old tape

I found instead.

Hello, pilots.

Happy March of 2001, which is the year that it currently is and one that will no doubt shape up great for the concept of airplanes.

Have you ever wanted to fly over… the poles?

Well, it's not pop—well, it's as easy as one, two, th—wait, there are more than three.

All you need to remember is one simple word—Skempt.

Yes, with Skempt, flying over the poles is a breeze.

Keen pilots may notice that the first letter of Skempt is S, which, of course, stands for special training.

All pilots and crew manning polar flights must have special training for flying in Arctic conditions and maintaining equipment in the extreme cold.

Your crew must also have access to at least two cold-weather anti-exposure suits for unknown reasons, because if you have to get out of the plane at an unexpected stop, it might be cold.

Before you chart your course, the FAA will need to sign off on a route of emergency alternate airports for unexpected landings due to mechanical or medical issues and plans to evacuate passengers from each of those airports within 48 hours of landing.

During the flight, you'll need to closely monitor your fuel temperature, because if your fuel starts to drop below freezing temperature, you'll need to change your altitude or just give up and fly to Cancun.

Polar flights will also necessitate the use of charts with your true heading, rather than traditional magnetic navigation.

That's because the poles have an area of magnetic unreliability due to the presence of dark—due to science.

As long as you can remember to Skempt, your passengers will be spared a horrible, horrible death.

Now, while these extra rules might disincentivize a route over Antarctica, they wouldn't necessarily prevent it—after all, commercial flights regularly follow these rules up north.

Major routes like Dubai to Los Angeles, New York to Hong Kong, and New Delhi to San Francisco all shave hours off their flight time by flying over the North Pole, either because Earth is a sphere or because there's a very generous time wizard hanging out somewhere in Greenland.

But if it's not just the South Pole's poleyness, there must be another factor at play.

This is where our second problem comes in.

Basically, every commercial twin-engine plane is given a certain rating for how far it can be at any given time from a suitable diversion airport.

This is to make sure that there's always a runway that a flight can divert to in the event of an emergency, like if one of your engines fails or you run out of those little bags of peanuts.

This rating is called ETOPS and it's measured in flight time.

Before 1985, all twin-engine planes were ETOPS 60, meaning they could only ever fly within a 60-minute radius from an airport.

Because of this restriction, flying over any major stretch of ocean had to be done by larger three- or four-engine planes.

As planes got better, ETOPS numbers went up.

Nowadays, most common commercial planes like the Boeing 737 and the Airbus A320 can have a rating of up to ETOPS 180.

That covers about 95% of the globe—pretty much everything, except for Antarctica.

To put things into perspective, the closest potential diversion airport to the South Pole is the Ushuaia International Airport in Argentina, but it's still about 2,500 miles or 4,000 kilometers away.

That's like spraining your ankle in Manhattan and walking to Nicaragua to get it fixed—assuming you can walk at 560 miles per hour in a straight line over the ocean, in which case the sprained ankle probably isn't that big of a—ok, look, it's not a great analogy, but the point is, the South Pole is far away.

Even the longest-range commercial aircraft in the world, the Airbus A350, caps out at a rating of 370 minutes, leaving a fairly large chunk of the continent off-limits to law-abiding pilots.

Despite all these restrictions, an airline could, theoretically, route a flight over part of Antarctica—they'd just need the right plane, the right equipment, and a specially trained crew.

At the end of the day, though, there just aren't many routes over Antarctica that make sense.

The vast majority of international flights already take place in the Northern Hemisphere, since that's the hemisphere with 90% of Earth's population and 100% of Earth's M&M stores.

Now, some flights do come close to the Antarctic coast, like the routes between Sydney and

Johannesburg or Santiago, and depending on wind conditions they will sometimes fly over a tiny bit of Antarctica, but absolutely zero go anywhere close to the pole itself.

Remember the theoretical route I brought up at the beginning of the video, from Perth to Buenos Aires?

That's pretty much the only one, and there just isn't enough demand to warrant flying it anyways.

But you know what there is demand for?

Decent gifts.

If you're currently scrambling to find something for your friends or family, let me help you out with a suggestion—Audible.

Audible memberships are a great, easy gift because they've got something for everyone—true crime podcasts?

Check.

Sleep-inducing soundscapes?

Check.

A massive streaming catalog of best-selling audiobooks?

Well, duh, it's Audible.

Plus, if there's an audiobook you want that's not part of their streaming catalog, you can snag an extra title for free every single month, and you keep it forever.

You can listen to these books anytime, anywhere—the gym, the car, and with Audible's download feature, even long plane rides.

Personally, I've been using Audible to listen to The President's Daughter, which is a thriller co-written by James Patterson and Bill Clinton, which is weird enough on its own, but the weirder bit is that it's actually really good.

Better yet, this holiday season, you can get 60% off a three-month Audible subscription, as a gift or for yourself, by visiting Audible.com slash HAI, or by texting HAI to 500-500.