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Air Travel - Complete listings for all airlines, flight tracking, airport codes, last minute flights, student airfare, airplane information, history of flight, safety, news and jobs.
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Common types of airplanes are airliners, large planes usually used to transport passengers; military planes; and general-aviation aircraft. Links to major airplanes manufacturers.
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Airplanes
An airplane is a heavier-than-air machine that is kept aloft by the forces on its wings. It is thrust forward by a propeller or other means of propulsion, such as a jet or rocket. Common types of airplanes are airliners, large planes usually used to transport passengers; military planes; and general-aviation aircraft, which cover all airplanes that are not airliners or military aircraft. They generally are smaller than airliners and can transport people or cargo or perform a wide variety of specialized functions such as crop-dusting, flight training, and recreational flying.
Aircraft fall into two broad categories:
Heavier than air aerodynes, including autogyros, helicopters and variants, and conventional fixed-wing aircraft: aeroplanes in Commonwealth English, airplanes in North American English.
Fixed-wing aircraft generally use an internal-combustion engine and propeller or jet engine to provide thrust, which moves the craft forward through the air. The movement of air over the wings produces lift, which allows the airplanes to fly. Exceptions are gliders which have no engines and gain their thrust from gravity. That is, in order to maintain their forward speed they must descend in relation to the air (but not necessarily in relation to the ground).
Helicopters and autogyros use a spinning rotor (a rotary wing) to provide both lift and thrust. The abbreviation VTOL is applied to airplanes other than helicopters that can take off or land vertically. Similarly, STOL stands for Short Take Off and Landing.
Lighter than air aerostats: balloons and airships. Aerostats float in air in the same way that a ship floats in water, by displacing the air around the craft with a lighter gas (helium or hydrogen), or hot air. The distinction between a balloon and an airship is that an airship has some means of controlling forward motion and steering while balloons simply drift with the wind.
There are several ways to classify aircraft. Below, we describe classifications by design, propulsion and usage.
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 Boeing Commercial Airplanes
- Boeing is the world's premier commercial jetliner manufacturer, corporate website providing overview, organisiation, products, services, model details and more. www.boeing.com
Airbus
- Airbus media center providing information on all aspects of Airplane manufacture. Multimedia gallery; photos, video, virtual news, drawings, goodies. Press releases. Library; family overview, customer services, our advantages, enviroment, certificates, online magazine and more. www.airbus.com
 Concorde - The Aérospatiale-BAC Concorde supersonic transport (SST) was one of only two supersonic passenger airliners to have seen commercial service. Details and links.
 Airplane Pictures - Selection of five commercial airplane pictures, five United States military airplane pictures, each picture is accompanied with summary description.
 Aurora Aircraft - T.A. Heppenheimer offers the latest attempt to sift fact from fantasy out of the reports of secret hypersonic surveillance Aurora aircraft. Links for further Aurora Aircraft information.
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