30 Amazing Airplanes Facts You Didn’t Know | Amazing Facts 4U
- On December 17, 1903, Orville Wright made the first-ever manned flight at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina. His flight lasted 12 seconds and covered a distance of 120 ft. That same day, Orville’s brother Wilbur made his first flight, which lasted 59 seconds, with the same aircraft.
- Almost five years later, the Wright brothers were the first to fly in an airplane for more than one hour. On Sept 9, 1908, Orville Wright flew for 62 minutes. On Sept 21, 1908, Wilbur Wright flew for 91 minutes.
- Orville Wright who invented the aircraft was involved in the first aircraft accident. His passenger, a Frenchman, was killed.
- Birds were the fastest creatures on Earth until 1919. At that time, pilots first reached speeds of 190 mph (306 km/hr) beating birds like the peregrine falcon, clocked at speeds nearing 185mph(298km/hr) while diving.
- Now, pilots can fly at supersonic speeds. Pilots in the fastest aircraft, X-15A-2, can fly Mach 6 (six times the speed of sound) or about 4,500 mph (7,000 km/hr).
- A jumbo jet uses 4,000 gallons of fuel just to take off.
- There is enough fuel in the Jumbo jet to drive an average car 4 times around the World.
- The reason why the lights are turned out during takeoff and landing is for your eyes to adjust to lower levels of light if there’s an accident.
- Flights longer than 8 hours require 3 pilots to rotate flying duties. Flights longer than 12 hours require 4 pilots.
- The outer skin of an airplane is only 5 mm thick. Only 7.5 in (19 cm) separate the passengers from the outside.
- The wing creates lift as it moves through the air, a process that can be explained by Bernoulli’s principle. Because of the airfoil shape, air flows faster over the top than the bottom, creating higher pressure underneath the wing which then pushes the plane up through the lower air pressure.
- The black box on an airplane is in fact bright orange so that it can be easily found among the wreckage.
- During takeoff, when full of high-pressure air, the takeoff weight is increased by about a ton.
- Passengers and their luggage account for only 10 % of the aircraft weight.
- A Boeing 737 weighing 68 Tons must deflect about 40 Tons of air, over a million cubic feet (31,500 cubic meters) down by 55 feet each second while in flight.
- The amazing fact is that seventy-five thousand engineering drawings were used to produce the first 747.
- A Boeing 747s wingspan is longer than the Wright brother’s first flight.
- A 747-400 has six million parts (half of which are fasteners) made in 33 different countries.
- Airplane engines may be classified as driven by propeller, jet, turbojet, or rocket.
- Each engine on a Boeing 747 weighs almost 9,500 pounds (4,300 kg), cost about $8 million USD.
- Altogether the four engines account for about 5 percent of the total weight of a full 747 upon takeoff.
- The fastest passenger aircraft was the concord which is no longer in service.
- The Boeing 767 aircraft is a collection of 3.1 million parts from 800 different suppliers around the world.
- A commercial aircraft door will not open in flight because it is actually bigger than the window frame itself.
- Commercial airlines prohibit the carry mercury thermometers because if such a thermometer were to break and spill on a plane, even a tiny amount of mercury could badly damage the plane’s aluminum frame by reacting with it.
- Modern jet engines are strong enough to turn the Titanic into a speedboat.
- IFF (Identifies Friend or Foe) on modern aircraft is an electronic component that identifies friendly or enemy aircraft in your surroundings.
- The first flight attendants had to weigh less than 52 Kg, be unmarried, and be trained nurses.
- The windows in an airport control tower must be tilted out at exactly fifteen degrees from the vertical to minimize reflections from both inside and outside the control tower.
- A plane in China had to be pushed half a mile by its passengers and airport staff after landing to clear the runway at Zhengzhou Airport in September 2008. It took two hours.
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