Eli5: How can something as heavy as a aeroplane can lift and even more interesting how can it maintain a certain height for very long time above the air?

Question

Also if someone says increase engine power doesn’t that increase planes weight which means you need more engine power and it goes into a infinite loop

In: 0

Answer 1

Planes don’t fly because of engines. That’s a rocket you’re thinking of.

Planes fly because they have wings. Those wings allow them to glide in the air. The engines are there to speed up the plane up to the point where it has enough forward momentum for the wings to start providing lift, and to keep pushing the plane towards its destination afterwards.

A plane can fly with all engines off the same way a paper plane can. It’ll just have to come down at some point, but planes are engineered to stay airborne for a very long amount of time with no engines in case of failure so that the pilot can land locate a safe airport to land in. As an example, a typical airliner can glide for 100 miles with no engines from cruising altitude. It moves forward by simply converting the potential energy it inherently has from flying so high up into kinetic energy.