Headwind vs Tailwind: What’s the Difference, and Which Do Pilots Want?

A headwind blows against your direction of travel. A tailwind blows from behind you, in the same direction you are going.

For pilots, the difference decides almost everything about a flight. A headwind is what you want for takeoff and landing, because it gets the wing flying at a lower speed over the ground. A tailwind is what you want in cruise, because it carries the airplane toward its destination faster and on less fuel.

The same wind can be both. It is the direction of travel, not the wind itself, that makes it a headwind or a tailwind.

What Is a Headwind?

A headwind is any wind with a component blowing into your face as you move. It slows your progress over the ground and makes the trip take longer.

It rarely blows from dead ahead. If you are heading due north (360 degrees), any wind from just west of north round to just east of north, anywhere between 271 and 089 degrees, gives you some headwind, mixed with a crosswind that pushes you sideways.

What Is a Tailwind?

A tailwind is the mirror image: wind with a component blowing from behind, pushing you along. It raises your speed over the ground and shortens the trip.

Heading due north again, any wind from 091 to 269 degrees carries a tailwind component. A wind from exactly 090 or 270 is a pure crosswind, neither helping nor hurting your progress.

The Real Difference: Airspeed vs Ground Speed

An airplane flies through a block of air, and that block of air is itself moving over the ground. The wing only feels its speed through the air, which is its airspeed.

Wind changes only the speed over the ground. An airliner cruising at 450 knots through the air with a 50-knot headwind covers the ground at 400 knots. Turn it around, and the same wind becomes a 50-knot tailwind and a 500-knot ground speed.

That single idea explains everything that follows. When you want to be slow over the ground (takeoff and landing), a headwind helps. When you want to be fast over the ground (cruise), a tailwind helps.

Why Pilots Want a Headwind for Takeoff and Landing

An airplane lifts off when its airspeed reaches flying speed. With a headwind, part of that airspeed arrives free, so the airplane reaches flying speed at a lower ground speed and with more runway left in front of it.

The effect is large. The FAA’s Pilot’s Handbook of Aeronautical Knowledge gives the rule of thumb: a headwind equal to 10 percent of the takeoff airspeed cuts the takeoff distance by about 19 percent, while a tailwind of the same size adds about 21 percent.

A headwind of half the takeoff speed shrinks the distance to about a quarter of the no-wind figure. The handbook notes that wind affects landing distance the same way, which is a big part of why how long a runway needs to be depends on the day, not only on the airplane.

So airports point takeoffs and landings into the wind whenever they can. Pilots check the reported wind against the runway in use, which is identified by the runway markings and signs in front of them.

How Much Tailwind Can a Plane Take Off or Land With?

Some, but not much. Aircraft manufacturers publish a maximum tailwind component for takeoff and landing in the flight manual, and according to the safety database SKYbrary it is usually around 10 knots and sometimes as high as 15.

Air traffic control will often keep a preferred runway in use for noise or traffic flow reasons with a light tailwind. SKYbrary puts the usual switching point at a tailwind component of around 5 knots.

The risks are a longer takeoff run, a shallower climb over obstacles, a faster touchdown, and a longer landing roll. SKYbrary’s record of runway overruns with a tailwind in play includes a Boeing 737 at Burbank in 2018.

Why Pilots Want a Tailwind in Cruise

Once the airplane is up and flying, all that matters is ground covered per hour and per gallon. A tailwind adds straight to ground speed, so the flight is shorter and burns less fuel, which is exactly what a dispatcher weighs when deciding how much fuel to load.

The biggest tailwind on the planet is the jet stream. The polar jet flows west to east at around 30,000 feet (9,100 m), often faster than 57 mph (92 km/h), with speeds of 250 mph (400 km/h) measured.

That is why eastbound flights over North America can arrive about 30 minutes sooner than the same trip westbound. It is also why transatlantic flights fly a different route each way: eastbound planners chase the jet stream, westbound planners dodge it.

BA112 beat the previous subsonic record of 5 hours 13 minutes, set in January 2018 by a Norwegian Boeing 787-9 riding a tailwind of up to 176 knots. The Boeing 747-400 flew the 3,451 miles (5,554 km) with no extra thrust at all. The wind did the rest.

How to Work Out a Headwind or Tailwind Component

Take the angle between the wind direction and your heading. The headwind component is the wind speed times the cosine of that angle, and the crosswind component is the wind speed times the sine.

An angle under 90 degrees gives a headwind, over 90 degrees a tailwind, and exactly 90 degrees a pure crosswind. You do not need a calculator: the table below covers the angles pilots use for mental math.

Worked example: you are lined up on runway 36 (heading 360) and the tower reports wind 030 at 20 knots. The angle is 30 degrees, so you have about 17 knots of headwind and 10 knots of crosswind to correct for.

When a Headwind Turns Into a Tailwind: Windshear

The most dangerous wind is one that changes on short final. A microburst is a strong downward and outward gush of wind from a storm. An airplane flying through one on approach meets a headwind first and a tailwind after it.

The headwind makes airspeed spike, tempting the crew to slow down. Then the tailwind arrives, airflow over the wing drops, and lift falls away close to the ground, with little height to recover.

Windshear is not the same thing as ordinary bumps, although the two often share a cause. Our guide to what causes turbulence covers the rest.

Headwinds and Tailwinds in a Holding Pattern

A hold is a racetrack flown over a fix, often a VOR, while a busy airport clears its arrivals. Because the airplane flies one leg into the wind and the other leg with it, a hold shows the headwind and tailwind switch every few minutes.

The FAA’s Aeronautical Information Manual fixes the inbound leg, not the outbound one: 1 minute at or below 14,000 feet MSL, and 1.5 minutes above it. Pilots fly the first outbound leg for the same time, then adjust later outbound legs until the inbound leg comes out right.

With a headwind on the inbound leg, the outbound leg has a tailwind and covers more ground, so the inbound leg runs long. The fix is to shorten the outbound leg. With a tailwind inbound, the pilot lengthens it.

Headwinds and Tailwinds Outside Aviation: Business and Sport

Most people meet these words in a finance headline, not a cockpit. Merriam-Webster gives both a figurative sense: a headwind is “a force or influence that inhibits progress,” and a tailwind is one “that advances progress toward an improved condition.”

So when a company reports currency headwinds, the exchange rate is holding its results back. A market tailwind, like rising demand, is pushing them forward. The idea is borrowed straight from the literal wind, which Merriam-Webster first records as “headwind” in 1709 and “tailwind” in 1897.

Sport draws the line precisely. In sprints up to 200 meters, the long jump and the triple jump, a tailwind stronger than 2 meters per second (about 4.5 mph) means a performance cannot count as a record.

Pilots have the neatest summary of all. Wish a pilot a headwind for takeoff and landing, and a tailwind for everything in between.