An iXBT.com user states that in theory planes could fly over both poles: over the South and over the North. But if we talk about normal commercial flights, they do not really cross the space of Antarctica. Not many planes fly over the North Pole (for example, there are flights from Dubai to Seattle and Los Angeles, New Delhi to Washington and San Francisco, Shanghai or Guangzhou to Toronto), but they still exist.
So why don’t planes cross Antarctica if such a route is shorter and cheaper?
The reasons are very simple. The fact is that according to the geography of the Southern Hemisphere, there are quite a few routes that, in principle, involve the forced passage of Antarctica. The total land area in the Southern Hemisphere as a whole is half that in the Northern Hemisphere.
In general, there are only two such ways. This is a flight from the southeastern coast of South America to the southwestern part of Australia and from South Africa to New Zealand. None of these flights are packed with enough people to form regular commercial flights.
Source: Ferra
