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Airplanes
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by Chris Woodford. Last updated: May 9, 2016.

e take for it granted that we can fly from one side of the
world to the other in a matter of hours, but a century ago this
amazing ability to race through the air had only just been
discovered. What would the Wright brothersthe pioneers
of powered flightmake of an age in which something like 100,000
planes take to the sky each day in the United States alone? They'd be amazed, of course, and delighted too. Thanks to their
successful experiments with powered flight, the airplane is rightfully recognized as one of the greatest inventions of all time. Let's take a closer look at how it works!
Photo: You need big wings to lift a big plane like this US Air Force C-17 Globemaster. The wings are 51.75m (169ft) widethat's just slightly less than the plane's body length of 53m (174ft). The maximum
takeoff weight is 265,352kg (585,000lb), about as much as 40 adult elephants! Photo by Jeremy Lock courtesy of US Air Force.

How do planes fly?

If you've ever watched a jet plane taking off or coming in to land, the first thing you'll have noticed is the noise of the
engines. Jet engines, which are long metal tubes burning a continuous rush of fuel and air, are far noisier (and far more
powerful) than traditional propeller engines. You might think engines are the key to making a plane fly, but you'd be wrong.
Things can fly quite happily without engines, as gliders (planes with no engines), paper planes, and indeed gliding birds
readily show us.
Photo: Four forces act on a plane in flight. When the plane flies horizontally at a steady speed, lift from the wings exactly balances the plane's
weight and the thrust exactly balances the drag. However, during takeoff, or when the plane is attempting to climb in the sky (as shown here),
the thrust from the engines pushing the plane forward exceeds the drag (air resistance) pulling it back. This creates a lift force, greater than the
plane's weight, which powers the plane higher into the sky. Photo by Nathanael Callon courtesy of US Air Force.

If you're trying to understand how planes fly, you need to be clear about the difference between the engines and the wings
and the different jobs they do. A plane's engines are designed to move it forward at high speed. That makes air flow
rapidly over the wings, which throw the air down toward the ground, generating an upward force called lift that overcomes
the plane's weight and holds it in the sky. So it's the engines that move a plane forward, while the wings move it upward.
Photo: Newton's third law of motion explains how the engines and wings work together to make a plane move through the sky. The
force of the hot exhaust gas shooting backward from the jet engine pushes the plane forward. That creates a moving current of air
over the wings. The wings force the air downward and that pushes the plane upward. Photo by Samuel Rogers (with added
annotations by explainthatstuff.com) courtesy of US Air Force. Read more about how engines work in our detailed article on jet
engines.

How do wings make lift?

In one sentence, wings make lift by changing the direction and pressure of the air that crashes into them as the
engines shoot them through the sky.

Pressure differences
Okay, so the wings are the key to making something flybut how do they work? Most airplane wings have a curved upper surface and a flatter lower surface, making a crosssectional shape called an airfoil (or aerofoil, if you're British):

Photo: An airfoil wing typically has a curved upper surface and a flat lower surface. This is the wing on NASA's solar-powered Centurion plane. Photo by Tom Tschida courtesy of NASA Armstrong Flight Research
Center.

In a lot of science books and web pages, you'll read an incorrect explanation of how an airfoil like this generates lift. It goes like this: When air rushes over the curved upper wing
surface, it has to travel further than the air that passes underneath, so it has to go faster (to cover more distance in the same time). According to a principle of aerodynamics
called Bernoulli's law, fast-moving air is at lower pressure than slow-moving air, so the pressure above the wing is lower than the pressure below, and this creates the lift that
powers the plane upward.
Although this explanation of how wings work is widely repeated, it's wrong: it gives the right answer, but for completely the wrong reasons! Think about it for a moment and you'll
see that if it were true, acrobatic planes couldn't fly upside down. Flipping a plane over would produce "downlift" and send it crashing to the ground. Not only that, but it's perfectly
possible to design planes with airfoils that are symmetrical (looking straight down the wing) and they still produce lift. For example, paper airplanes (and ones made from thin
balsa wood) generate lift even though they have flat wings.
But the standard explanation of lift is problematic for another important reason as well: the air shooting over the wing doesn't have to stay in step with the air going underneath it,
and nothing says it has to travel a bigger distance in the same time. Imagine two air molecules arriving at the front of the wing and separating, so one shoots up over the top and
the other whistles straight under the bottom. There's no reason why those two molecules have to arrive at exactly the same time at the back end of the wing: they could meet up
with other air molecules instead. This flaw in the standard explanation of an airfoil goes by the technical name of the "equal transit theory." That's just a fancy name for the
(incorrect) idea that the air stream splits apart at the front of the airfoil and meets up neatly again at the back.
So what's the real explanation? As a curved airfoil wing flies through the sky, it deflects air and alters the air
pressure above and below it. That's intuitively obvious. Think how it feels when you slowly walk through a
swimming pool and feel the force of the water pushing against your body: your body is diverting the flow of water

as it pushes through it, and an airfoil wing does the same thing (much more dramaticallybecause that's what it's
designed to do). As a plane flies forward, the curved upper part of the wing lowers the air pressure directly above
it, so it moves upward.
Why does this happen? As air flows over the curved upper surface, its natural inclination is to move in a straight
line, but the curve of the wing pulls it around and back down. For this reason, the air is effectively stretched out into
a bigger volumethe same number of air molecules forced to occupy more spaceand this is what lowers its
pressure. For exactly the opposite reason, the pressure of the air under the wing increases: the advancing wing
squashes the air molecules in front of it into a smaller space. The difference in air pressure between the upper and
lower surfaces causes a big difference in air speed (not the other way around, as in the traditional theory of a
wing). The difference in speed (observed in actual wind tunnel experiments) is much bigger than you'd predict
from the simple (equal transit) theory. So if our two air molecules separate at the front, the one going over the top
arrives at the tail end of the wing much faster than the one going under the bottom. No matter when they arrive,
both of those molecules will be speeding downwardand this helps to produce lift in a second important way.
How airfoil wings generate lift#1: An airfoil splits apart the incoming air, lowers the pressure of the upper air stream, and accelerates
both air streams downward. As the air accelerates downward, the wing (and the plane) move upward. The more an airfoil diverts the path
of the oncoming air, the more lift it generates.

Downwash
If you've ever stood near a helicopter, you'll know exactly how it stays in the sky: it creates a huge "downwash" (downward moving draft) of air that balances its weight. Helicopter
rotors are very similar to airplane airfoils, but spin around in a circle instead of moving forward in a straight line, like the ones on a plane. Even so, airplanes create downwash in
exactly the same way as helicoptersit's just that we don't notice. The downwash isn't so obvious, but it's just as important as it is with a chopper.
This second aspect of making lift is a lot easier to understand than pressure differences, at least for a physicist: according to
Isaac Newton's third law of motion, if air gives an upward force to a plane, the plane must give an (equal and opposite)
downward force to the air. So a plane also generates lift by using its wings to push air downward behind it. That happens
because the wings aren't perfectly horizontal, as you might suppose, but tilted back very slightly so they hit the air at an angle of
attack. The angled wings push down both the accelerated airflow (from up above them) and the slower moving airflow (from
beneath them), and this produces lift. Since the curved top of the airfoil deflects (pushes down) more air than the straighter
bottom (in other words, alters the path of the incoming air much more dramatically), it produces significantly more lift.
You might be wondering why the air flows down behind a wing at all. Why, for example, doesn't it hit the front of the wing, curve
over the top, and then carry on horizontally? Why is there a downwash rather than simply a horizontal "backwash"? Think back to
our previous discussion of pressure: a wing lowers the air pressure immediately above it. Higher up, well above the plane, the air
is still at its normal pressure, which is higher than the air immediately above the wing. So the normal-pressure air well above the
wing pushes down on the lower-pressure air immediately above it, effectively "squirting" air down and behind the wing in a
backwash. In other words, the pressure difference that a wing creates and the downwash of air behind it aren't two separate things but all part and parcel of the same effect: an
angled airfoil wing creates a pressure difference that makes a downwash, and this produces lift.
Now we can see that wings are devices designed to push air downward, it's easy to understand why planes with flat or symmetrical wings (or upside-down stunt planes) can still
safely fly. As long as the wings are creating a downward flow of air, the plane will experience an equal and opposite forceliftthat will keep it in the air. In other words, the
upside-down pilot creates a particular angle of attack that generates just enough low pressure above the wing to keep the plane in the air.
How airfoil wings generate lift#2: The curved shape of a wing creates an area of low pressure up above it (red), which generates lift. The low pressure makes air accelerate over the wing, and the curved shape of
the wing (and the higher air pressure well above the altered air stream) forces that air into a powerful downwash, also pushing the plane up. This animation shows how different angles of attack (the angle between
the wing and the incoming air) change the low pressure region above a wing and the lift it makes. When a wing is flat, its curved upper surface creates a modest region of low pressure and a modest amount of lift
(red). As the angle of attack increases, the lift increases dramatically tooup to a point, when increasing drag makes the plane stall (see below). If we tilt the wing downward, we produce lower pressure
underneath it, making the plane fall. Based on Aerodynamics, a public domain War Department training film from 1941.

How much lift can you make?

Generally, the air flowing over the top and bottom of a wing follows the curve of the wing surfaces very closelyjust as you might follow it if you were tracing its outline with a pen.
But as the angle of attack increases, the smooth airflow behind the wing starts to break down and become more turbulent and that reduces the lift. At a certain angle (generally
round about 15, though it varies), the air no longer flows smoothly around the wing. There's a big increase in drag, a big reduction in lift, and the plane is said to have stalled.
That's a slightly confusing term because the engines keep running and the plane keeps flying stall simply means a loss of lift.
Photo: How a plane stalls: Here's an airfoil wing in a wind tunnel facing the oncoming air at a steep angle of attack. You can see lines of smoke-filled air
approaching from the right and deviating around the wing as they move to the left. Normally, the airflow lines would follow the shape (profile) of the wing
very closely. Here, because of the steep angle of attack, the air flow has separated out behind the wing and turbulence and drag have increased
significantly. A plane flying like this would experience a sudden loss of lift, which we call "stall." Photo courtesy of NASA Langley Research Center.

Planes can fly without airfoil-shaped wings you'll know that if you've ever made a paper airplaneand it was proved on
December 17, 1903 by the Wright brothers. In their original "Flying Machine" patent (US patent #821393), it's clear that slightly
tilted wings (which they referred to as "aeroplanes") are the key parts of their invention. Their "aeroplanes" were simply pieces of
cloth stretched over a wooden framework they didn't have an airfoil (aerofoil) profile. The Wrights realized that the angle of attack
is crucial: "In flying machines of the character to which this invention relates the apparatus is supported in the air by reason of
the contact between the air and the under surface of one or more aeroplanes, the contact-surface being presented at a small
angle of incidence to the air." [Emphasis added]. Although the Wrights were brilliant experimental scientists, it's important to
remember that they lacked our modern knowledge of aerodynamics and a full understanding of exactly how wings work.
Not surprisingly, the bigger the wings, the more lift they create: doubling the area of a wing (that's the flat area you see looking down from above) doubles both the lift and drag it
makes. That's why gigantic planes (like the C-17 Globemaster in our top photo) have gigantic wings. But small wings can also produce a great deal of lift if they move fast enough.
To produce extra lift at takeoff, planes have flaps on their wings they can extend to push more air down. Lift and drag vary with the square of your speed, so if a plane goes twice
as fast, relative to the oncoming air, its wings produce four times as much lift (and drag). Helicopters produce a huge amount of lift by spinning their rotor blades (essentially thin
wings that spin in a circle) very quickly.

Wing vortices
Now a plane doesn't throw air down behind it in a completely clean way. (You could imagine, for example, someone pushing a big crate of air out of the back door of a military
transporter so it falls straight down. But it doesn't work quite like that!) Each wing actually sends air down by making a spinning vortex (a kind of mini tornado) immediately behind
it. It's a bit like when you're standing on a platform at a railroad station and a high-speed train rushes past without stopping, leaving what feels like a huge sucking vacuum in its
wake. With a plane, the vortex is quite a complex shape and most of it is moving downwardbut not all. There's a huge draft of air moving down in the center, but some air
actually swirls upward either side of the wingtips.

Photo: Newton's laws make airplanes fly: A plane generates an upward force (lift) by pushing air down toward the ground. As these photos show, the air moves down not in a neat and tidy stream but in a vortex.
Among other things, the vortex affects how closely one plane can fly behind another and it's particularly important near airports where there are lots of planes moving all the time, making complex patterns of
turbulence in the air. Left: Colored smoke shows the wing vortices produced by a real plane. The smoke in the center is moving downward, but it's moving upward beyond the wingtips. Right: How the vortex
appears from below. White smoke shows the same effect on a smaller scale in a wind tunnel test. Both photos courtesy of NASA Langley Research Center.

How do planes steer?

What is steering?
Steering anythingfrom a skateboard or a bicycle to a car or a jumbo jetmeans you change the direction in which it's traveling. In scientific
terms, changing something's direction of travel means you change its velocity, which is the speed it has in a particular direction. Even if it goes at
the same speed, if you change the direction of travel, you change the velocity. Changing something's velocity (including its direction of travel)
means you accelerate it. Again, it doesn't matter if the speed stays the same: a change in direction always means a change in velocity and an
acceleration. Newton's laws of motion tell us that you can only accelerate something (change its speed or direction of travel) by using a forcein
other words, by pushing or pulling it somehow. To cut a long story short, if you want to steer something you need to apply a force to it.
Another way of looking at steering is to think of it as making something stop going in a straight
line and start going in a circle. That means you have to give it what's called a centripetal force.
Things that are moving in a circle (or steering in a curve, which is part of a circle) always have
something acting on them to give them centripetal force. If you're driving a car round a bend, the
centripetal force comes from friction between the four tires and the road. If you're cycling around
a curve at speed, some of your centripetal force comes from the tires and some comes from
leaning into the bend. If you're on a skateboard, you can tilt the deck and lean over so your weight
helps to provide centripetal force. In each case, you steer in a circle because something provides
the centripetal force that pulls your path away from a straight line and round into a curve.
Photo: Steering a plane by banking at a steep angle. Photo by Ben Bloker courtesy of US Air Force.

Steering in theory
If you're in a plane, you're obviously not in contact with the ground, so where does the centripetal force come from to help you steer around a
circle? Just like a cyclist leaning into a bend, a plane "leans" into a curve. Steering involves banking, where the plane tilts to one side and one
wing dips lower than the other. The plane's overall lift is tilted at an angle and, although most of the lift still acts upward, some now acts sideways.
This sideways part of the lift provides the centripetal force that makes the plane go round in a circle. Since there's less lift acting upward, there's
less to balance the plane's weight. That's why turning a plane in a circle will make it lose lift and altitude (height) unless the pilot does something
else to compensate, such as using the elevators (the flight control surfaces at the back of the plane) to increase the angle of attack and therefore
raise the lift again.
Artwork: When a plane banks, the lift generated by its wings tilts at an angle. Most of the lift still
acts upward, but some tilts to one side, providing centripetal force that makes the plane steer
round in a circle. The steeper the angle of the bank, the more the lift is tilted to the side, the less
upward force there is to balance the weight, and the greater the loss of altitude (unless the pilot
compensates).

Steering in practice
There's a steering control in the cockpit, but that's the only thing a plane has in
common with a car. How do you steer something that's flying through the air at high speed? Simple! You make the air flow in a different way past
the wings on each side. Planes are moved up and down, steered from side to side, and brought to a halt by a complex collection of moving flaps
called control surfaces on the leading and trailing edges of the wings and tail. These are called ailerons, elevators, rudders, spoilers, and air
brakes. Wikipedia's article on control surfaces is a pretty good explanation of what they all do with some very clear diagrams, so I won't bother to
go into more details here. NASA's basic introduction to flight has a good drawing of airplane cockpit controls and how you use them to steer a
plane.
One way to understand control surfaces is to build yourself a paper plane and experiment. First, build yourself a basic paper plane and make sure
it flies in a straight line. Then cut or rip the back of the wings to make some ailerons. Tilt them up and down and see what effect they have in
different positions. Tilt one up and one down and see what difference that makes. Then try making a new plane with one wing bigger than the other
(or heavier, by adding paperclips). The way to make a paper plane steer is to get one wing to generate more lift than the otherand you can do
this in all kinds of different ways!

More parts of a plane

Here are some other key parts of planes:
Fuel tanks: You need fuel to power a planelots of it. An Airbus A380 holds over 310,000 liters (82,000 gallons)
of fuel, which is about 25,000 times as much as a typical car! The fuel's safely packed inside the plane's huge
wings.
Landing gear: Planes take off and land on sturdy wheels and tires, which are rapidly retracted into the
undercarriage (the plane's underbody) by hydraulic rams to reduce drag (air resistance) when they're in the sky.

Radio and radar: The Wright brothers had to fly their pioneering Kitty Hawk plane entirely by sight. That didn't
matter because it flew near the ground, stayed in the air for only 12 seconds, and there were no other planes to
worry about! These days, the skies are packed with planes that fly by day, by night, and in all kinds of weather.
Radio, radar, and satellite systems are essential for navigation.
Pressurized cabins: Air pressure falls with height above Earth's surfacethat's why mountaineers need to use oxygen cylinders to reach extreme heights. The summit of
Mount Everest is just under 9km (5.5 miles) above sea level, but jet planes routinely fly at greater altitudes than this and military planes have flown almost three times
higher! That's why passenger planes have pressurized cabins: ones into which heated air is steadily pumped so people can breathe properly. Military pilots avoid the
problem by wearing face masks and pressurized body suits.
Photo: The Wright brothers took a very scientific approach to flight, meticulously testing every feature of their planes. Here they are pictured during one of their first powered flights on December 17, 1903.
Courtesy of NASA on the Commons.

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Acknowledgements
I'm very grateful to Steve Noskowicz for invaluable help in refining and improving my explanation of how wings generate lift.

Find out more

On this website
Aerodynamics
Altimeters
Hot-air balloons
Parachutes
Propellers
Radar

On other sites
The Beginner's Guide to Aeronautics: A great introduction to the science of flight (particularly aimed at students) from the NASA Glenn Research Center. Covers how
planes and engines work, wind tunnels, hypersonics, aerodynamics, kites, and model rockets.
The Wilbur and Orville Wright Papers at the Library of Congress: Quite a few of the Wrights' fascinating papers and photos are available online.
Flying Machine: The original Wright brothers patent (filed March 22, 1903 and granted May 22, 1906) is well worth a read, because it gives an insight into flight in the
inventors own words. Since this patent describes an unpowered machine, it's easy to understand the crucial importance of the wings in a "flying machine"something we
tend to overlook in the age of the jet engine!

Books
For older readers
The Airplane, a History of its Technology by John David Anderson. American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, 2002. A book celebrating the first century of
powered flight.
How we Invented the Airplane: an Illustrated History by Orville Wright (edited by Fred C. Kelly). Courier Dover, 1988. Well worth a look to see how the Wrights approached
the problem of flight.
For younger readers
Air and Space Travel by Chris Woodford. Facts on File, 2004. One of my own books, this one charts the history of flight through balloons, planes, and space rockets.
Suitable for ages from about 10 to adult.
Eyewitness: Flight by Andrew Nahum. Dorling Kindersley, 2011. A visual guide to the history and technology behind planes and other flying machines.
Airplanes: Uncovering Technology by Chris Oxlade. McRae Books Srl, 2007. A simple 46-page introduction for ages 10+.

Articles
How do wings work? by Professor Holger Babinsky. Physics Education, Volume 38, Number 6. A more detailed explanation of why the traditional Bernoulli explanation of
lift is wrong, and an alternative account of how wings really work.

Videos
How airplanes fly: A long (18.5 minute) 1968 video from the Federal Aviation Administration that explains the basics of flight to pilots.
How wings work: This short scientific film by Holger Babinsky shows the air movements across an airfoil (aerofoil) as the angle of attack changes.
Aerodynamics: This old and crackly US War Department training film from 1941 explains the theory of airfoils and how they produce different amounts of lift as the angle of
attack varies.

Sponsored links

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Text copyright Chris Woodford 2009, 2015. All rights reserved. Full copyright notice and terms of use.

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Woodford, Chris. (2009/2016) Airplanes. Retrieved from http://www.explainthatstuff.com/howplaneswork.html. [Accessed (Insert date here)]

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