analyze – i has it

Flying is one of those things that I’ve always enjoyed.  I love anything that has to do with flight.  It is more of a hobby than a career though, which is why I don’t fly for a living.  I was going to get to fly last night with a buddy of mine, but his instructor got sick, so we had to enjoy being stuck to the ground instead.

My sister, Jenna, has a fear of heights.  She always has.  I remember driving to Grandma and Grandpa Laird’s every year growing up and going through the rest area that had the observation tower back in the woods.  Every year we would go to climb it, and every year she would get all disturbed.  I didn’t pay much attention to this back then because I wanted to get to the top as quick as I could to see the view.  What a kind brother I was.

This fear of heights has translated into a fear of flying.  Which is most unfortunate for her in my opinion since I think flying is great.  The advantage, is when we go on family vacations, she is more than happy to give up her seat by the window to me in exchange for a seat near the center of the plane.

The truth is, people that are afraid of heights may have good grounds to be afraid of them.  Even I get the queezies when I look at the picture below.

Men On Skyscraper

If one of those guys fell backwards, they would more than likely fall to their doom, death, and demise.  That’s why I have a desk job.  This does not hinder my enjoyment of flying however.

Why, you might ask, does the fact that falling from hundreds or thousands of feet in the air will cause death not hinder your enjoyment of flying.  This is the important point, and the point that I hope my sister Jenna takes to heart when she has to fly next time.  It is the fact that a human, is not designed to fly or glide or do anything graceful in the air, other than fall.  The airplane however, is designed to do all three: fly, glide, and do them gracefully.

A quick physics lesson about airplane flight.  Think of the wings of the airplane as what keeps the plane up, and the engines as what makes the plane go forward.  In some respects you must have both in order to fly, however you can get speed without engines, if you have altitude just be descending, but I digress.

The engine in the plane is similar to the engine in the car, so I won’t get into that.  Suffice it to say that the engine propells the plane forward and causes air to rush over the wings.

That last part is the important part, because this is where planes differ from humans falling through the air.  A human falling through the air can flail as much as they like, but will most likely never fly.  They don’t have wings.  A wing is specially designed to create LIFT.  Lift is described as the difference of pressure between the top and bottom of a wing causing the wing to move towards the area of lower pressure.  A visual would help.

Lift

I had originally thought that it was the engines that kept the plane up.  You push anything fast enough through the air, and it will fly right?  So you just need a really big engine (which planes have) and you can fly.  What I was thinking of is actually called a Rocket (which I always enjoy).  A rocket doesn’t have a wing and is, in fact, propelled upward only because the engine behind it is huge.

The airplane however does not rise off the ground solely due to the engine power.  The engine just propels the airplane forward so that air passes over the wings.  Once air passes over the wings, lift begins to occur.  See the diagram above?  The air has to take a longer path around the top of the wing than around the bottom.  This results in the air moving over the top of the wing moving faster.  It’s roughly the same amount of air as is moving along the bottom of the wing though, so in order to move faster it has to spread out.  And when air spreads out, the pressure drops.  Pressure is just the measurement of how many air molecules there are per square inch.

When you suck on a straw, the Pepsi in the cup comes into your mouth.  This is because the sucking action causes the pressure in your mouth to drop below the pressure in the cup.  The Pepsi tries to fill that area of low pressure and moves up the straw and into your mouth.

The same thing happens with the wing.  When the lower pressure is created on the top of the wing, the wing begins to move up.

Therefore, the engine is only used to keep air moving over the wing, the wing itself is what causes the plane to rise off the ground and truly fly.  This, I hope, is a great comfort to those with a fear of flying because it demonstrates the difference between a human falling through the air and a bird or plane flying through the air.  The human is helpless because they have no wings, but the plane with the help of the lift on the wings, will be able to gracefully soar to its destination.

Armed with that knowledge, go out and fly confidently and without fear.

Boeing 777-200