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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.

Just like all combustion engines, jets need to begin spinning to start. Small internal combustion engines, like those in our cars or small piston airplanes, use a small electrical motor. The motor spins the flywheel, which makes the cylinders in the engine move. Once fuel, air, and spark are added in, the engine fires right

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

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

We’re all used to seeing two pilots on the flight decks of airliners. But what about the smaller private jets you see flying around secondary community airports? Are these planes flown by wealthy owners, or are they operated by charter companies? Most jets, even small ones, require two pilots in the cockpit. The reasons why

It should come as no surprise that North American-based Boeing manufactures some big airplanes. Since the maiden flight of its venerable 747 in the late 1960s, Boeing has been hitting the runway with big planes. The current version of the 747, the 747-8, is at the head of the pack. So, which is bigger, Boeing