The core of the “Principles of Flight” course (a.k.a. PoF, a.k.a. Aerodynamics) is the chapter about the four forces. This piece of propaganda and disinformation has been designed to make pilots think that four forces apply to an aircraft and govern its spatial evolution: lift, weight, thrust, and drag.

This is a fundamental mistake, and I’ll unveil here what are the true four forces involved in flight physics. If you’re a pilot you probably know them, and if you envisage to become a pilot, it’s good you know them before.

At first. it’s not lift that moves the plane upwards, it’s only pilot’s dreams and hopes. No flight can take place without a pilot, which by definition is a dreamer. Otherwise, he would work in a bank, or worse, an administration (more on that later – no offense. May be not.).

The force that opposes to dreams and hope, tending to bring the airplane down is not the weight. It’s the strong power of reality. All the “because it is so”, “you can’t do that”, “no way”, and other silly answers.

Theory says that the force making the plane go forward is thrust. This is also wrong. The only thing that can possibly accelerate a plane is money. Try  to get it out of the equation, and the plane will stop. It’s sad, but it’s so. Oops, part of “reality”.

Finally, the force opposing to forward movement is not drag, but administration. You don’t believe it because you think administration is part of reality ? True. Administration is so strong that it is by itself counter-acting dreams AND money !

That being said, there is only thing to add: the propeller is not used to pull planes forward, but rather to refresh the pilot. To demonstrate that, stop the engine, and look how quickly the pilot starts to sweat.

Part of this post has been inspired by a funny drawing found on a blog in french: Penpen au Quebéc. Thank you, and see you tomorrow for something slightly more serious !