Why do airplanes reduce power right after take off?

Answer 1

A couple of reasons.

First: Engine reliabiliy. The engines (whether they are piston or turbine) have less wear and tear on them if they are operated at reduced power.

Second: Noise abatement. More power means more noise.

As far as speeds are concerned, unless the aircraft has an altitude restiction (ie: not above 4000 until advised by ATC), the plane can simply pitch up to keep the speed down as required.

Answer 2

The primary reason the plane reduces power is because the plane does not need to accelerate as much any more. On takeoff the pilots have a limited space to increase there speed enough for takeoff once in the air and usually around 600-800 feet the pilots can slow the engines down a little bit around 93-90% power on normal climbs. It is the same thing as accelerating you car onto the highway, you need to give a good amount of power to get up to 65mph with higher RPMs but than once you reach the speed you can ease off the throttle and maintain the speed you want. It would not make sense to fly the whole climb at takeoff power. That is bad for the engiens and waste alot of fuel.

Answer 3

There are multiple reasons depending on multiple factors such as type of aircraft, noise abatement procedures, etc. One thing someone mentioned was to reduce wear and tear. A similarly related yet different reason is temperature. There are some engines, especially turbo charged and large piston engines, that overheat if run at too high power for too long. As an example, the turbo charged Cessna 210's manual says at most 2 minutes at full power.

Answer 4

"AA Pilot" is wrong and matter of fact is a kid in boy scouts so any reference he makes to aviation has to be taken with a grain of salt. The rest of the answers are pretty much correct. There are alot of factors that determine why such as noise abatement, service life on the engine. If you fly out of a high altitude airport you might notice they will use the takeoff power setting for a longer period of time to gain the most amount of altitude before a power reduction.

Answer 5

It has absolutly nothing to do with going overspeed... Hell, in the CRJ-200 we could be overspeed in 30 seconds after takeoff, theres alot of power for the size of the airplane... We could however, takeoff at max power (which is rare and not regular procedure) and keep it there for the duration of the climb... we would just pitch the nose up much more than normal to stay under the speed limit...

It has everything to do with engine maininance costs, and fuel... higher power means more wear on the engine and higher fuel burn rate...

Answer 6

Small planes generally stay at max power until they reach cruising altitude. --- because engine failures usually occur when the power setting is changed.... so better to be at a safe alititude.

Jets will reduce power much sooner to conserve fuel and to conform to noise limitations near airports. All commercial jets have their fuel and power management done by computer and are programmed by the airlines to minimize fuel consumption. Since the late 1970's commercial jets have actually been going about 100 mph slower than they used to.

Answer 7

If not, the engine would break (oil temperature and other staff would go crazy). Airplanes have a maximum time of 5 min when they can have full power. In extreme situations, they can have full power for more than 5 min, but after the landing, the engine must be replaced. Or at least that`s how it stands with small airplanes.

Answer 8

Too Save fuel and for Noise Abatement procedures.
The Aircraft only needs enough takeoff thrust for the weight of the aircraft, the temp outside, the pressure outside, and a few other things. You can then figure out how much thrust ,on a chart ,or let the ACARS tell you and you then set that N1 amount. After take off you select a lower thrust for the climb out like in a VNAP A....

Answer 9

mainly because they just dont need all of that power, youve got to remember that a multi engined aircraft must be able to fly with the loss of one engine, so there is efectivley one engine spare, so they can just reduce the overall power, some flight also dont take off with full power

Answer 10

While there is a 250 knot limit below 10,000 feet around airports, it's mostly to reduce noise. They pour on the power to get off the ground and as high as possible within the confines of the airport boundary, then throttle back until they are out of earshot, then resume climb.