The Modern Commercial Airplane

The airplane is one of the most impressive pieces of machinery. It can carry tons of cargo, fly well over one hundred miles per hour several thousand feet in the air, and is one of the safest forms of transportation on the planet. Even with these amazing assets many people still do not want to fly.
One of the best features of an airplane is that it is so fast. There are engines called turbines, which are very powerful and create several thousand pounds of thrust. A jet engine uses a fan on the front to suck in air, mixes it with burning fuel, and blasts the expanded air-gas mixture out the back. In the process, it turns a turbine in the back of the engine that spins the fan in the front. Because every action has an equal and opposite reaction, a jetliner surges forward as its engines push air backward.…