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Air New Zealand Limited
Learn how airplanes fly
Supermarine Spitfire F-86 turbojet flight simulator airship Searcher UAV unmanned aerial vehicle glider
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airplane summary
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(Left) Ball of predictions with answers to questions based on the Magic 8 Ball; (right): Rubik's Cube. (toys)
The Dating Game: Which Came First?
NASA's Reduced Gravity Program provides the unique weightless or zero-G environment of space flight for testing and training of human and hardware reactions. NASA used the turbojet KC-135A to run these parabolic flights from 1963 to 2004.
Man-Made Birds in the Sky
Concorde. Front end of one of the 20 Concorde supersonic airplanes. A joint British French production they flew for 30 years (1973-2003).
Navigating the Sky
Hindenburg zeppelin crashing, 1937
Transportation and Technology Firsts Quiz
Air New Zealand Limited
Air New Zealand Limited Air New Zealand Boeing 747-400.

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Articles from Britannica Encyclopedias for elementary and high school students.
Also known as: aeroplane, plane
Written by
James E. Vance
Emeritus Professor of Geography, University of California, Berkeley. Author of Capturing the Horizon: The Historical Geography of Transportation and others.
James E. VanceAll
Fact-checked by
Britannica Editors
Encyclopaedia Britannica's editors oversee subject areas in which they have extensive knowledge, whether from years of experience gained by working on that content or via study for an advanced degree....
Britannica Editors
History

airplane, any of a class of fixed-wing aircraft that is heavier than air, propelled by a screw propeller or a high-velocity jet, and supported by the dynamic reaction of the air against its wings. For an account of the development of the airplane and the advent of civil aviation see history of flight. (Read Orville Wright’s 1929 biography of his brother, Wilbur.) The essential components of an airplane are a wing system to sustain it...

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