can an commercial airplane sit in one spot in the air?

Answer 1

If you were in a small, civilian airplane traveling at 100 knots true airspeed and you had a head wind that was exactly 100 knots, you wouldn't be traveling anywhere at all relative to the ground. If you were in a small, civilian airplane whose top speed was 100 knots true airspeed, and the headwind was 110 knots, you would actually be traveling backwards by 10 knots. Some light civilian airplanes simply can't get where it is that they are trying to go on certain days because of winds. They either have to change altitudes or pick a different day to fly somewhere. You won't see this is in an airline, however, because the headwinds are never anywhere near what the cruising speed of the airline is. However, there have been times when I have been cruising along at 450 knots true airspeed and facing a 160 knot headwind. Now my groundspeed is 290 knots. This can play a significant factor in your fuel planning if the winds weren't forecast to be that high.

Answer 2

As in hover? No. But an airplane can sit still in the air and any aircraft can fly backwards. When practicing stalls in a training aircraft such as a Cessna 172(Mind you much smaller than a Boeing haha) you can get the airplane to what is called MCA(Minimum controllable airspeed) witch in a 172 is 40 Knots. If the headwind facing you is greater than your Ground Speed the airplane will fly backwards and sometimes sit still or seem to for a small amount of time.

Answer 3

There are no commercial planes that can do that, but there is a British plane called a Harrier that can float and even fly backwards! There are still some around but their production was stopped since they crash so often. The reason they were made was so they could easily land on aircraft carriers.
Every once in a while they'll have one at an air show.

Answer 4

The physics of lift and gravity would answer your question as no. However, the Harrier of the United States Navy, can "sit in one spot" as it is capable of diverting it's thrust downwards to hover. Modern day commercial aircraft unfortunately do not support this feature, and are fixed wing craft. They are unable to incorporate this type of technology into commercial aircraft, due to frustrating energy limitations.

Answer 5

Theoretically yes, though it would require a headwind of sufficent speed to provide the necessary airflow over the wings, and the engines to be set to give an equal speed into the wind, so the thrust of the plane and the drag of the headwind were exactly equal

Answer 6

No, an airplane has to be moving in order for it to stay airborne because there must be constant air flow under the wings. If the plane slows down it will start to "stall" and lose lift under its wings and go down.

Answer 7

It is possible for some classes of aircraft to do this. It involves a rather high angle of attack so that the downward thust vector of the engine(s) equals the weight of the aircraft, and the horizontal vector equals the wind speed. On propeller aircraft, it is refered to as "hanging on the prop." Getting into and out of this condition is a very delicate maneuver, not for the inexperienced pilot.

Answer 8

Flying into a very strong head wind ground speed could be zero is the only time this could occur. Most airliners travel faster that hurricane force winds however. 350 mph to just sub-sonic. Landing at 160 mph.

Answer 9

Of course not! Only a helo or a VTOL can hover.

BTW, it's "a" commercial airplane, not "an" commercial airplane.

Answer 10

No, but the military does have jets with this capability, they call it hovering.