Airplanes

Looking at a propeller airplane whilst the engines are on, it is impossible to tell the direction they spin. Do all propellers spin the same way? And what if there is more than one? Read on to find out… TLDR – The propellers on most airplanes spin clockwise, when viewed from behind the engine. This […]

Speed has always been a focal point of many with an interest in any motorized form of transport, and aviation is no exception. Want to arrive at your destination rapidly? Book a ticket for one of these fastest passenger planes in the world. All the way up to the nineties, aircraft manufacturers were trying to […]

Everyone has at some point in their life looked out their window and been overjoyed at the sight of snow outside. But seeing snow through an airplane window brings many threats with it; so what exactly are they and can an airplane take off into snow? Or you may have a holiday to the sun […]

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 […]

When Wilbur and Orville Wright designed the first successful powered airplane, they knew that they would have to control the wings’ lift to keep the airplane level. To roll the plane left and right, they devised a system to warp the shape of the wings. To control the wing warp, the pilot had to swing […]

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 […]