Could a small airplane (Piper Cub, ETC.) that has a take off speed of 50 MPH, take off flying backwards if heading into a 60 MPH headwind?

and the plane was at full power?
Answers

Anonymous

Yes

Anonymous

I met a gal from Missoula, MT, her family had an ancient 150. Her brothers flew it into a headwind over the high school , and throttled back until they weren't moving forward. Everybody looked up to see the plane just "hanging:" in the sky! Its forward AS matched the headwind. It was technically still moving or it would stall.

☣ - ₲ⱠɆ₦Đ₳ - ☣

That has been known to happen. But the plane isn't actually flying backwards. It only looks that way relative to the ground.

Dport

technically yes. The ground speed has nothing to do with life. I have hovered n a 172 due to a head wind.

Zack

The plane will fly forward at 50MPH, but the air it’s flying through is moving backwards at 60MPH, so the plane will move 10MPH backwards over the ground.

ugiidriver

I flew a Piper Tomahawk backwards for about a mile through the Banning Pass, the Banning Pass is the exhaust pipe of Los Angeles. Once while landing a Piper J3 at Santa Paula, I touched down and turned off the runway with zero ground roll. The takeoff you describe is perfectly doable, but I would never attempt backwards flight close to the ground because if it went wrong there is no room to recover. It would look bad on the NTSB report.

flyingtiggeruk

Theoretically it might. In reality it is likely to be blown backwards before it could get up to speed. Maybe it could be held on the brakes, or some other restraint, but 60mph winds are not smooth or continuous or always coming from the same direction.

JetDoc

Fixed wing airplanes CAN NOT "fly backwards" at ANY time. They ALWAYS fly forward, BUT if flying into a strong enough headwind, they could be seen as flying backwards to someone who is observing from the ground.

Denny

Didn't you answer your own question? Knowledge requires study time this is basic physics.

FlagMichael

More or less. The major limitation is control. When I worked at the Oakland (CA) airport a Helio backed up in the air for a short distance before landing into a stiff headwind. Being a taildragger it would have ground looped if it tried landing backward. A tricycle gear is not a huge improvement. At full power it would not likely be flying backward relative to the ground for any length of time, either.

Ronald 7

A fixed wing Aircraft can not fly backwards It would quickly go into a stall and crash Even Mythbusters tried it Epic Fail !!

Robert S

No