Invisabowl

Invisabowl t1_iyf4eel wrote

Reply to comment by DarkAlman in ELI5 if a plane flew really high then hovered for 24hrs, would it rotate with the earth, or would it be able to watch the land rotate? by JoyGodLives

>The short answer is planes can't hover because they need air flowing over their wings to fly. If they were to have zero ground speed they would immediately crash.

I’m sure you already know this and were just simplifying it to make your point but planes don’t care about ground speed. It’s not super common but planes can hover if they have enough wind. It’s called perching. As you said they require airflow.

Some aircraft have a very low stall airspeed such as STOL aircraft so it doesn’t take more than about 45-50 knots of wind to start perching. In some cases they can even fly backwards lol.

Some other interesting things that happen are the transatlantic commercial flights that end up with a supersonic ground speed because of very high tailwinds in the jet stream, yet if the plane was actually supersonic it would destroy the aircraft.

Again, not bringing this up to detract from your well explained comment. I just really like planes lol.

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