What’s the absolute minimum speed a plane has to go for it to stay in the air?

Question

What’s the absolute minimum speed a plane has to go for it to stay in the air?

In: Physics

Answer 1

This is called stall speed because in order to generate enough lift to stay in level flight the wings need so much angle of attack that they are about to stall and loose lift. There are a lot of variables going into calculating the stall speed of an airplane. For example the type of aircraft, the weight of the aircraft, configuration, the altitude, temperature, pressure, etc. So the stall speed might be anything between 35 knots and 350 knots, sometimes even for the same aircraft.