Airplanes

In January 2009 the photo of a floating US Airways A320 was splashed on the front cover of every newspaper after it made an emergency landing in the Hudson River. But is this an exception to the rule? Or do all airplanes float on water? An emergency landing on water is something that every pilot

Like car, truck, or computer manufacturers, airplane makers struggle to come up with a recognizable brand for their products. Boeing has been incredibly successful at doing this since they carved out a niche in the passenger jet market in the 1960s. Today, Boeing planes are recognizable the world over just by the mention of their

In the hundred-plus years that designers have been perfecting airplanes, they’ve come up with quite a few creative ways to squeeze more lift out of a wing. While that’s helpful to get the plane off the ground, it’s critical to make a plane easy to control during flight phases. High-speed planes like airliners and fighter

When you drive your car, you can easily control the vehicle in forward and reverse. You can back out of your parking space and then drive away, all under your own power. Is this how pilots can maneuver their planes on the ground? The answer may surprise you. No, airplanes don’t have a reverse gear.

At the dawn of aviation, technology was expanding quickly every year. Planes traveled farther, flew higher, and got faster and faster. One of the roadblocks designers had to overcome was actually a limitation of the human body. Their planes performed better the higher they were operated, but the human at the controls needed more oxygen

Ailerons are the hinged panels near a plane’s wingtips that roll it left or right. How they work, adverse yaw, the main types, and how they differ from flaps.

One of the really neat things about riding in the passenger seat of an airliner is sitting over the wing and watching all of the plane’s flight controls move during flight. What are they all doing? Everyone has heard of “flaps,” but what exactly are they? What Are Flaps? Flaps are trailing-edge high-lift devices. That’s

Aviation has complicated jargon and terminology that can stump even seasoned enthusiasts. But every once in a while, a device’s name is so simple that its purpose becomes quickly apparent. Such is the case with spoilers. How Do Airplane Spoilers Work? Spoilers are devices on the wing that “spoil,” or reduce, the lift being made.

A duopoly is an industry or sector dominated by only two businesses. Two companies dominate the commercial airliner market, namely Boeing and Airbus. These companies are continually in the news, battling one another for slices of market share. And since these are the planes that most people fly on at one time or another, they

Airbus began 49 years ago and manufactures some of today’s most popular aircraft. But Airbus have made less than 20 different civilian aircraft, so why do they all begin with 300? The first Airbus was flown in 1974. Since then the Airbus fleet has travelled over 215 billion kilometres (enough distance to travel to the