How do planes fly upside-down?

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I understand that the wing of the plane creates downforce, lifting the plane into the air, so how do planes fly upside-down? Wouldn’t the wings start pushing the plane down into the ground once flipped?

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33 Answers

Anonymous 0 Comments

A lot of it is due to angle of attack, from what I understand

If you have a situation like → where the arrow is wind and the line is the wing, you can imagine that the air will hit it and go down. If the air goes down, the wing goes up, so you generate lift

This is only true up to a certain point when the air separates from the wing above it, but that’s not relevant now

In real planes, the wing isn’t just a straight line because there are other effects that can generate lift, so it can be more efficient. With that said, if you fly upside-down and give yourself enough angle of attack, you can overpower the lift from the shape of the wing and generate lift upside-down. It’s more difficult to fly like that for many reasons, but it’s possible on some planes for a short time

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