Airplane

📖 In short

The airplane is one of the fastest ways to travel in the world, carrying people and goods across the sky from country to country in a few hours. A journey that once took months by ship or camel now takes a day or less!

🤩 Did you know?

Some big planes have two decks for passengers.
Big planes fly about 10 kilometers up.
Some planes take off and land on a very short runway or straight up and down.
A plane's black box is orange so it's easy to find.

🔎 Find out more

🌟 How does it fly?

A plane's wings have a special shape, curved on top. When the plane rushes forward, air passes over and under the wing in a way that pushes the wing upward, and this force is called lift.

🔍 Engines

Engines push the plane forward with great force. Some are spinning propellers, and most big planes have jet engines that blast hot air backward.

💡 The cockpit

At the front of the plane is the cockpit, where the pilot and co-pilot sit, with lots of screens and buttons in front of them showing speed, height and direction.

🎯 The first flight

People have dreamed of flying since ancient times, and the Arab scholar Abbas ibn Firnas tried to fly more than a thousand years ago. In 1903 the Wright brothers made the first flight in a powered airplane.