planes taking off into the wind

[bimsey]

my husband would have me believe that planes have to take off into the wind is he serious?

[craig w]

this ain't true! But it used to be in the days of biplanes. By taking off into the wind, planes get a bit more lift and can take off more quickly. That's why old style runways were built in diamond shapes or facing the prevailing wind direction. This isn't neccessary anymore now that planes have more power, but pilots will still take off into the wind given a preference to save fuel.

[Stewart]

Not so far fetched I suspect. However I live near an airport and on many occasions the planes use the runway in the opposite direction to normal. Could that be because the wind is in the "wrong" direction?

[TheHitMaker]

I remember a couple of years ago Prince Charles landed a plane at an airport with the wind rather than against it and ran off the end of the runway. In the same way planes need to take off into the wind, and land into the wind, otherwise they would not only use more fuel, but also need a lot more runway to play with.

[sddsddean]

I used to fly gliders and if you try taking off / landing downwind you have all sorts of control problems, so it is still basically true. Also, although jets get catapulted off aircraft carriers, the ship itself goes full speed into wind to try and give the aircraft more airspeed at launch.

[kev_insane]

Planes can take off or land with or against the wind, but there are more advantages to taking off against the wind. Typically, the active runways at Airports are the ones that have the wind going against the planes as they take-off and land.

[TheHitMaker]

What it comes down to is that a plane needs to reach a certain air speed, not ground speed, in order to take off. Therefore, going into the wind you can add the wind speed to your ground speed and take off earlier.

[Ben C]

Yep, HitMaker has it. Airplanes need *airspeed* to fly - their speed on the ground ('groundspeed') has nothing to do with flight. The reason why planes take off into wind is because of runway length. For example, say you need 70kts of *airspeed* to fly, and the wind is 10kts. If you take off directly into wind, the wind provides 10kts of airspeed without having to accelerate down the runway at all. So, if you are traveling at 60kts down the runway into wind, you actually have 70kts of airspeed and you can take off. But if you are taking off 'downwind', you need to be going at 10kts on the ground before you get ANY airspeed whatsoever...think about it and it is easy to understand. So to fly you would need 10kts on the ground to get zero airspeed, plus the extra 70kts to fly. So to get 70kts airspeed downwind, you would need to travel at *80kts* down the runway. Why bother to accelerate to 80kts if you can take off the other way at 60 kts? What if something went wrong as soon as you took off? If you were taking off as you passed 60kts, you probably have enough runway left to land. If you took off at 80kts groundspeed, you might not have any runway left. Besides, by climbing into wind, you get to climb steeper and can clear obstacles (e.g. mountains) with less distance covered on the ground. Much safer. Taking off / landing into wind is most critical when the runway is only slightly longer than the minimum needed. Remeber the required runway length is increased anyway when the runway is damp or flooded, snowy, iced over, made of (long) (wet) grass or boggy ground, covered in leaves, etc .... why make things harder for yourself? By the way, if the wind was stronger than the airspeed needed to fly, then a plane could, in theory, take off backwards. Hope this helps.

[daddude2001]

Please please please...a plane is a tool for removing the surface of wood. Aeroplane or aircraft please. Aaargh cringe. I see even the BBC newsreaders now call aircraft "planes". Sorry, just an old chaps' deep irritation factor 10. Please note that sddsddean, a pilot, is the only one on the answer list who has not called those beautiful machines "planes". (Oh how hard that is to type). Makes my teeth itch!