eli5 why are flaps extended during takeoff if they slow down the plane?
In: Engineering
You extend the flaps so that the plane will fly at lower speeds. Thus, when you want to go as slow as possible and still fly, you put the flaps down. You want the airplane to fly as soon as possible on takeoff because runways are a finite resource, they only go so long. So the quicker you can get in the air the better, even if it means you aren’t achieving full speed to do it. Once you are up and your airspeed has risen enough, you can raise the flaps because the plane no longer needs them to fly and would just slow it down. The, when you are landing, you want to slow down as much as you can while you are still in the air in order to land in the shortest distance possible, because, once again, runways are finite resources.
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