Correct, you seem to have a good grasp on frame of reference, so I'm unsure where the confusion is. If we are talking about an outside observer, let say someone on the moon, a plane would move visibly faster or slower depending on whether it was traveling east or west (due to the rotation of the earth relative to the moon). However, that sort of frame of reference does not give us useful information and the position of the observer has no impact on the plane itself, only the observer's perception of it.
It is neither easier nor harder for the plane to travel west or east. From the plane's frame of reference, minus local weather currents, there is no difference, and ignoring the time zone change, flights from LA to NY and NY to LA should take about the same length of time, with about the same amount of effort by the plane. Time dilation has nothing to do with it, and time zones are completely arbitrary, they only exist to normalize the experience of a 24-hour day for everyone around the world. I have a friend who lives in India and we almost are almost never online at the same time since he is sleeping while I'm awake and vice versa, even though we both wake up around 9am locally.
As far as the water on the surface of a tennis ball, the water will gather towards the "equator" as the tennis ball spins around, however this is actually an observable phenomenon, the earth itself is known to be slightly oval (ellipsoid) shaped due to the distortion along this rotation axis. My main point regarding the glass example was more to demonstrate that the atmosphere is a part of earth and will always match the earth's rotation, minus local weather. If it did not, we would constantly be experiencing western winds of roughly 1000mph, which would be catastrophic.
Correct, you seem to have a good grasp on frame of reference, so I'm unsure where the confusion is. If we are talking about an outside observer, let say someone on the moon, a plane would move visibly faster or slower depending on whether it was traveling east or west (due to the rotation of the earth relative to the moon). However, that sort of frame of reference does not give us useful information and the position of the observer has no impact on the plane itself, only the observer's perception of it.
It is neither easier nor harder for the plane to travel west or east. From the plane's frame of reference, minus local weather currents, there is no difference, and ignoring the time zone change, flights from LA to NY and NY to LA should take about the same length of time, with about the same amount of effort by the plane. Time dilation has nothing to do with it, and time zones are completely arbitrary, they only exist to normalize the experience of a 24-hour day for everyone around the world. I have a friend who lives in India and we almost are almost never online at the same time since he is sleeping while I'm awake and vice versa, even though we both wake up around 9am locally.
As far as the water on the surface of a tennis ball, the water will gather towards the "equator" as the tennis ball spins around, however this is actually an observable phenomenon, the earth itself is known to be slightly oval (ellipsoid) shaped due to the distortion along this rotation axis. My main point regarding the glass example was more to demonstrate that the atmosphere is a part of earth and will always match the earth's rotation, minus local weather. If it did not, we would constantly be experiencing western winds of roughly 1000mph, which would be catastrophic.