To a non-pilot’s eye, on cold days and hot days, an airplane taking off, flying overhead, or landing looks pretty much the same. Sure, if it’s icy or raining very hard, there is a chance that the airplane could slip or hydroplane, but other than that, there doesn’t seem to be much of a difference. …
Giant airplanes like airliners and military transport aircraft use sophisticated, onboard methods to fly from Point A to Point B. Today, they usually use GPS (Global Positioning System) and/or a combination of other methods using lasers, gyroscopes, and other sophisticated stuff. Interestingly, a few years ago, the military deliberately downgraded the GPS signals the USA’s …
If an airplane can zoom along at supersonic speeds and provide Wifi on demand, why are passengers still grabbing for barf bags and gripping armrests when it comes to turbulence? Why can’t pilots just stay away from it? The short answer: They can’t. Turbulence is basically weather, and therefore about as predictable. What is …
An understanding of flight is rooted in a strong grasp of how an airplane gets in the air—and stays there. Both a passenger jet and a tiny paper airplane are governed by the same forces. Understanding airplane aerodynamics is key to a successful partnership with the atmosphere: They are the foundation for study for student …
Have you ever flown CLT to ORD to COS? If you read that as “Charlotte to Chicago to Colorado Springs,” you’re clued into the language of airport codes. The world’s most famous airports are familiar to us via media–who hasn’t seen the hero of a romantic comedy jump in a cab and yell “JFK, and …
Some pilots say that the only thing an airplane has in common with cars is that the tires are rubber, and that’s not really too far off the mark. The Wright brothers and their predecessors and later aeronauts developed a plethora of ideas from scratch that differ radically from the simple mechanics of ground-based transportation. …
Oxygen (O2) is the most vital of the gases that comprise our atmosphere. The typical percent of oxygen in breathable air is 20.9%, although we can live with as little as 19.5%. That’s a small spread. And it’s not just the percent of oxygen that is important: It is the pressure of the air, and …
In commercial airline flights these days the cabin where the pilots are located is always locked up and secured, allowing the pilot and co-pilot to fly the plane without distractions. The same is not true when you look at a small plane situation with the cockpit open to the rest of the smaller craft. Let’s …