Demystifying an Airplane's Flight

How is an airplane controlled?

An airplane takes-off from the runway at high speeds, and soon reaches an altitude. Once it is in air how is it controlled? What’s the difference between controlling an airplane and helicopter?

Video Credits: Learn Engineering

Many of us would have driven cars along roads, we use accelerator for varying the speed of car similarly throttle (thrust lever) is used in airplane. We use...

steering wheel in our car in order to change the direction or heading, similarly a control yoke is used in an airplane. 

Airplane landing gear too have brake similar to cars. But while in air they use spoilers, flaps, slats and few thrust reversal techniques for reducing speeds instantly.

Though every control look similar, the way they function is different. Accelerator and thrust lever functions similarly by controlling the amount of fuel fed to the engine.

Video Credits: shidifu111

While other functions are totally different. An airplane has 6 degrees of freedom, so it has higher manoeuvrability than a car. Primary motions of an airplane are "roll, pitch and yaw". Ailerons on the wings controls roll, elevator on the horizontal tail controls pitch and rudder on the vertical tail controls yaw.

The difference between controlling an airplane and helicopter is that, only control surfaces move in airplane. But in the case of helicopter the rotor blade’s angle are varied individually using swash-plate.