Can an aeroplane stand still in the air ie hover without moving ?

Question

Can an aeroplane stand still in the air ie hover without moving ?

Answer 1

Yes.

To echo all those who've gone before me.  Yes.

Sash.

Answer 2

Yes, aircraft like the harrier can sit stationary regardless of the wind.

Aircraft can stay stationary to the ground if there is a strong headwind.  So if you are indicating 40kts of speed, but there is a 40kt headwind your movement relative to the ground would be zero.

Hope this answers your question.

Answer 3

The harrier can. Many people think that is the only one though. The F-35 lightning II can to. It is going to be introduced in 2011. it will be in the United States Air Force,

United States Navy, United States Marine Corps, and Royal Air Force/Royal Navy (pro bally replacing the harrier.)

Answer 4

The early Citations were so slow they could go backwards with a strong enough headwind. They even installed the weather radar in the tail so they could detect advancing thunderstorms. hahahahahahahahahahah The pilots big concern was birdstrikes from the rear. hahahahahahahaa. Jeez man, I crack myself up.

Answer 5

In a strong head-wind, theoretically, yes (ignoring VTOL aircraft like the Harrier...)

It all depends on the wing profile of the aeroplane.

Edit to Pandas (below):

"To hover in the air it would need a huge downwards force in order to keep itself up" ... Erm... I think you'll find gravity provides the downforce. It would need upthrust to stay in the air.

"Basically the wings are designed so that the air going over the top of the wings travels faster than the air going beneath the wing. This faster moving air creates a lower pressure above the wing which creates a 'lifting' motion..." which is exactly right. So, what if the moving air were the wind? What if there was enough wind to lift the plane without forward motion. Is that not hovering???

Answer 6

Yes, The Harrier Jump Jet

Answer 7

Yes. I saw one at an air show a few years ago.  Called the 'Elevator' manuever.  It was a specially equipped Sukhoi 300 series. Hovered about a foot or so above the ground, vertically with the engine and prop pointing up, like a helicopter.  Awesome.  He increased the throttle, and it rose, he reduced power and it descended.  He got ready to leave and just pushed the throttle forward, and started flying again.

Answer 8

Yes we ether call it a Helicopter or a Harrier. Harriers are expensive. They use turbines pointing down ward to create upward lift. That way they can lift off like a heli.

Answer 9

A helicopter can but not aeroplanes.

Answer 10

Generally aircrafts are not built to hover in air. But lately certain aircrafts are capable of hovering in air for a very little time period; about a few seconds. The purpose of hovering aircraft was not an original conception but derived from STOL [Short takeoff and Landing]. In view of shorter run-ways on carrier ships STOL was experimented the result of which was the harrier jump jet. Although it is capable of hovering its main motive was to land and liftoff vertically without any use of run-ways.

But to its disadvantage it has to carry extra fuel for the purpose and so this feature is least used unless required.

Certain answerers guessed that when the air speed equals the aircraft speed the aircraft would hover. But that doesn;t make sense - no work is being done. Actually when this condition arises the observer on the ground feels that the aircraft is hovering, but in reality it doesn't, it is oving forward. Air Speed and Ground Speed are totally different.

Answer 11

The F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, V-22 Osprey and the Harrier are the only airplanes with the ability to hover.

Answer 12

Yes if it's a Harrier/AV8, Osprey, or helicopter. Otherwise no.

NB some aircraft, Fiesler Storch and Pilatus Porter for example have a low minimum speed, and can hover in a stiff wind

Answer 13

i have seen a propellor-driven plane do this by pulling up so the pilot is looking directly up.  the plane had a special propellor designed for this (ie it was HUGE). it hovered like this for 10ish seconds before turning into a dive

Answer 14

Yes if it's designed to do it the Harrier jet is just one..

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_VTO...

Answer 15

if the windspeed is great than the stall speed, yes.

This can be a problems for light aircraft in very windy conditions.

But pilots avoid flying into these winds because if the wind drops the plane can fall like a stone.

I've seen Cessnas almost still over White Waltham airfield. Too dangerous

Answer 16

If the wind speed is equal to the aircrafts air speed then the aircraft would hover.The wings aerodynamics would keep the aircraft in the air itself. However if the windspeed was greater than the aircraftsair speed the plane would be blown backwards. I guess that would be interesting in an "oh shoot" kinda way.

Answer 17

The closest I've seen to this was at Farnborough Air Show in 2001 (I think) when a Russian pilot at 300ft stood a Sukoy (?) on its tail for what seemed like 10 seconds before accelerating vertically out of sight!

Apparently all due to using the manual thrust verctoring system to balance the machine. If that's true he was some pilot!

Answer 18

Definatley possible in theory for any fixed wing aeroplane.

The machines are kept in the air by the lift generated by the airflow over & under the wings. If the air speed is high enough then the wing will generate enough Lift to keep the aeroplane airborne.

This airspeed is maintained in normal flight by the aircraft's engines pushing it forward. If the wind speed is high enough then the airspeed over the wing can be maintained solely by the wind itself - engines are not needed. That's how kites fly.

So, provided that the airspeed is right then the groundspeed could be zero and the aeroplane will apper to be stationery.

Some aircraft with weak engines and high-lift wings (such as swordfish) could even appear to be flying backwards when they encountered strong enough headwinds.

Answer 19

One of the three models of the new F-35 Lightning II Joint Strike Fighter will also be able to hover.

HTH

Answer 20

yes till they hit the ground!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Answer 21

Yes, it is possible.  a true hover- airspeed is 0, and the aircraft is maintaing a fixed position over an object on the ground. For the wind conditions, the aircraft is still "flying" as the air is passing the over the wings, and will still have an true airspeed greater than the stall speed, but the ground speed is 0 or negative forward speed.

The only way an aircraft can truly hover is a very high perfomance aerobatic aircraft that can actually "hang" on it prop, and perpendicalar to the ground. The thrust power of the engine has to be 1:1 (thrust to weight ratio), or higher. The engine and prop to have enough torq and power to produce enough lift, since thrust in this case is lift, as it is opposing gravity and not used to propel the aircraft forward, to sustain the weight of the aircraft. This usually seen at airshows as the airplane climbs and points straight up and then falls back down.. however the rudders and ailerons have to conunter act the torq of the engine, if not will result in the aircraft spinning around the prop.

Almost all GA aircraft do not have this amount of power, so its only can be done on very expensive, high performance, light aerobatic aircraft..

Answer 22

Yes there are different models of plane that do it....for example f35 ,harrier and olso some model of convertiplane like v-22 osprey a kind of transporter plane thath use is rotor to take-off as an helicopter and rotate the rotor to became a plane...

http://www.militaryfactory.com/aircraft/...

http://it.youtube.com/watch?v=w9PVFtmKNd...

v-22 is also similar to BA-609 http://it.youtube.com/watch?v=kaB9-a1Pou...

Answer 23

No, not really in normal aeroplanes. An aeroplane which is still would immediately be pulled down by gravity and fall to the ground. To hover in the air it would need a huge downwards force [correction: a force pushing down, which would keep the plane up, against gravity] in order to keep itself up (the rule which states every force has an equal and opposite force would then mean an equally large force would push it up, keeping it 'hovering'), however aeroplanes are not designed to do this as their main aim is to fly people from one place to another.  An aeroplane relies upon different air pressure to stay in the sky. Basically the wings are designed so that the air going over the top of the wings travels faster than the air going beneath the wing. This faster moving air creates a lower pressure above the wing which creates a 'lifting' motion as the high pressure below the wing wants to diffuse to the lower pressure. The engines help provide a forward motion and therefore it is easy to see that without air passing extremely fast over the wings, the plane could not atay airbourne; therefore it is impossible for it to hover.

However as others have said planes like helicopters and the Harrier planes can and do have the ability to hover. However Harrier planes can only hover for up to 90 seconds and during this time use up 150 gallons of water to keep the engine cool.

Edit for TallPaul- I phrased it wrong, sorry *blushes*. I meant it would need a huge force pushing down (thus keeping it up like a rocket does), not a downwards force, sorry again! And in high winds, conceivably yes the plane could hover, but taking into account the weight of the plane and the speed of the winds needed (especially where there is less air), this is highly unlikely. Wind speeds are generally higher the higher up you go because there is less friction slowing them down, but I still think it would be quite a rare occurance with the kind of large aeroplanes I was talking about. I have added the word 'really' at the top of my answer to allow room for those few planes which could indeed hover when in such high winds. I hope I've explained my mistakes well and I'd like to thank you for pointing them out to me. I've never been a big one for physics so I apologise for causing confusion.

Answer 24

not all of but some do. thats why they make helicopters.