Coriolis effect misunderstanding My wife asked me what the Coriolis Effect was, so I did some research. I think I get it now but I'm surprised at the number of "explanations" people have uploaded that actually seem wrong. This one is an example.
http://www.classzone.com/books/earth_science/terc/content/visualizations/es1904/es1904page01.cfm
This is wrong, right?
 A: I would say that some parts are unclear, but no, it's not "wrong".

Consider the return flight from Miami to Alaska. It's in the northern hemisphere so the deflection should be to the right, but the "earth rotating underneath" theory would predict deflection to the left.

The animations are not showing that the cause is "the earth rotating underneath".  If that were true, the line of travel would be fixed and not move along with the rotating earth.  Instead it is (trying) to show that the different tangential speeds of the initial and final points cause problems for a travelling object that retains that speed.
A return flight would curve to the right as it went north, if it retained the extra tangential speed that it left with.
I would agree that final sentence: "In reality, pilots take the Coriolis effect into account so they do not miss their targets." is incorrect.  Pilots take wind speed relative to the ground into account.  There is no explicit correction for Coriolis in flight navigation.
