Wings, Air, and Speed: The Simple Physics of Flight
If you stick out your palm out of the moving car window at the angle of 45 degrees to front, it will rise up.
Why? Because the pressure under the hand will be higher than one over the hand. Planes fly just like this.
The Gas Pillow
Under the wing, the high pressure area forms, some kind of a "gas pillow", on which the plane tightly rests.
The higher the speed is, the bigger the pressure difference is, and the bigger and tougher the pillow is.
What If Engines Fail?
By the way, if the speed goes away (for example in a highly unlikely case of simultaneous failure of all engines), we can always push the nose down. Then according to Newton's law, gravity will be accelerating us maintaining the necessary speed.
I got the experience of piloting the glider. It's a plane but without any engines. Well, despite the fact that the glider, just like the plane, is way heavier than the air, after being detached from the tug aircraft, we hovered over the scenery for another 20 minutes.
We maintained the "pillow" of high pressure by means of the speed, which we got from the energy of gradual descending.
Debunking the "Abyss Below" Myth
Which means that the classic horror story of anxious flyers "there's abyss below us and if something goes wrong, we'll fall through it" is simply not true.
If questions like "what if there's nowhere to land and both engines fail simultaneously over the ocean" are coming to your head, you should stop and ask yourself when was the last time you heard about the simultaneous failure of both engines.
