Why plane fly

If an object is not moving, it will not start moving by itself. If an object is moving, it will not stop or change direction unless something pushes it. When an object is pushed in one direction, there is always a resistance of the same size in the opposite direction.

How does a plane fly? Let's pretend that our arms are wings. If we place one wing down and one wing up we can use the roll to change the direction of the plane. We are helping to turn the plane by yawing toward one side.

If we raise our nose, like a pilot can raise the nose of the plane, we are raising the pitch of the plane. All these dimensions together combine to control the flight of the plane. A pilot of a plane has special controls that can be used to fly the plane. There are levers and buttons that the pilot can push to change the yaw, pitch and roll of the plane. To roll the plane to the right or left, the ailerons are raised on one wing and lowered on the other.

The wing with the lowered aileron rises while the wing with the raised aileron drops. Pitch makes a plane descend or climb. The pilot adjusts the elevators on the tail to make a plane descend or climb. Lowering the elevators caused the airplane's nose to drop, sending the plane into a down.

Raising the elevators causes the airplane to climb. Yaw is the turning of a plane. When the rudder is turned to one side, the airplane moves left or right. The airplane's nose is pointed in the same direction as the direction of the rudder. The rudder and the ailerons are used together to make a turn.

The pilot controls the engine power using the throttle. Pushing the throttle increases power, and pulling it decreases power. The ailerons raise and lower the wings. The pilot controls the roll of the plane by raising one aileron or the other with a control wheel. Turning the control wheel clockwise raises the right aileron and lowers the left aileron, which rolls the aircraft to the right.

The rudder works to control the yaw of the plane. The pilot moves rudder left and right, with left and right pedals. Pressing the right rudder pedal moves the rudder to the right. This yaws the aircraft to the right. Used together, the rudder and the ailerons are used to turn the plane. The elevators which are on the tail section are used to control the pitch of the plane.

A pilot uses a control wheel to raise and lower the elevators, by moving it forward to back ward. The ailerons are panels built into the trailing edge of the wings.

Like the elevators, they are used during flight to steer an aircraft and are manipulated by turning the control wheel or side-stick controller in the cockpit to the left or right. These steering motions deflect the ailerons up or down, which in turn affect the relative lift of the wings.

An aileron deflected down increases the lift of the wing to which it is attached, while an aileron deflected up decreases the lift of its wing. Thus, if a pilot deflects downward the aileron on the left wing of the aircraft, and defects upward the aileron on the right wing, the aircraft will roll, or bank, to the right. Spoilers are panels built into the top surfaces of the wings and mostly are used during landings to spoil the lift of the wings and thus keep the aircraft firmly planted on the ground once it touches down.

They also can be used during flight to expedite a descent. The other major control surfaces are the flaps and slats, both designed primarily to increase the lift of the wings at the slow speeds used during takeoffs and landings. Flaps are mounted on the trailing edge of the wings, slats on the leading edge. When extended, they increase lift because they make the surface area of the wings larger and accentuate the curve of the wings. Flaps also are commonly deployed during final approach to increase lift, which provides control and stability at slower speeds.

The landing gear is the undercarriage assembly that supports an aircraft when it is on the ground and consists of wheels, tires, brakes, shocks, axles and other support structures. Virtually all jet aircraft have a nose wheel with two tires, plus two or more main gear assemblies with as many as 16 tires. The landing gear is usually raised and lowered hydraulically and fits completely within the lower fuselage when retracted. Aircraft tires are filled with nitrogen rather than air because nitrogen does not expand or contract as much as air during extreme temperature changes, thus reducing the chances of a tire blowout.

The exact number of engines on an airplane is determined by the power and performance requirements of the aircraft. Most jet airplanes have two, three or four engines, depending on aircraft size. Some have the engines attached to the rear of the fuselage. Many have them mounted on pylons, hanging below the wings. Some have a combination of both, with an engine under each wing and one on top of the fuselage at the rear of the plane. The power produced by the engines is controlled by the pilots, either directly or indirectly, through computerized controls.

All large airliners are designed to fly safely on fewer than all engines. In other words, the remaining engine or engines have enough power to keep the aircraft airborne. As mentioned above, some form of propulsion is required to move an aircraft through the air and generate sufficient lift for it to fly. The earliest forms of propulsion were simple gasoline engines that turned propellers. Most modern airliners are equipped with jet engines, which are more powerful and mechanically simpler and more reliable than piston engines.

Jet engines first entered commercial service in the late s and were in widespread use by the mids. A jet engine takes in air at the front, compresses it into smaller and smaller spaces, by pulling it through a series of compressor blades. Then fuel is added to the hot, compressed air and ignites the mixture in a combustion chamber. This produces an explosion of extremely hot gases out the rear of the engine and creates a force known as thrust, which propels the engine and thus the aircraft forward.

It is the same principle that propels a balloon forward when blown up with air and released. The air escaping from both a balloon and a jet engine creates a pressure differential between the front and back of the enclosed space that results in forward movement. Importantly, as the hot gases explode out the back of a jet, they turn a wheel known as a turbine. The turbine is connected by a center shaft to the compressor blades at the front of the engine and thus keeps the compressor spinning while the engine is on.

As with all combustion engines, power is increased by adding more fuel to the combustion chamber. Today's most powerful jet engines can produce more than 90, pounds of thrust. Expressed another way, each of these giant engines can lift 90, pounds straight up off the ground. Since aircraft rely on their wings for vertical lift and engines only for horizontal movement, these large engines can lift enormous amounts of weight off the ground and power aircraft at great speeds.

There are three basic types of jet engines. Turbojets are engines that use exhaust thrust alone to propel an aircraft forward, as just described. Turbofans, or fanjets, are an improved version of the turbojet. With a larger fan at the front, the turbofan pulls in more air. It also diverts some of the incoming air around the combustion chamber and later mixes it with the hot exhaust gases escaping out the back.

This lowers the temperature and speed of the exhaust, increasing thrust at lower speeds and making the engine quieter. The third type is the turboprop, or propjet. It uses a jet engine to turn a propeller. Thrust is generated by both the propeller and the exhaust gases of the jet itself.

Turboprops are used on small, short-range aircraft such as those often operated by commuter and regional airlines.

They are efficient in these types of operations, but less so at the high speeds and high altitudes flown by the large commercial jets. History Home. Aviation jobs. Learn more. Avjobs helps those seeking work to find aviation related job openings that match their skills and location while assisting hiring managers and recruiters in locating those seeking work. Then Tell a Friend. Mid-flight airplanes is effected by 4 basic forces: thrust, drag, gravity and lift. If all of these forces are balanced, plane stays up in the air.

Each of these forces are crucial for plane to fly. Lift is generated 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 dramatically—because 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. Thrust is a force that moves an aircraft in the direction of the motion. It is created with a propeller, jet engine, or rocket.

Air is pulled in and then pushed out in an opposite direction. One example is a household fan. Drag is the force that acts opposite to the direction of motion.