This is a good resource: https://ciechanow.ski/airfoil/ https://ciechanow.ski/airfoil/ Useful to think of the airplane as standing still while the engine acce

This is a good resource: https://ciechanow.ski/airfoil/ https://ciechanow.ski/airfoil/ Useful to think of the airplane as standing still while the engine accelerates the air around it. To fly, you need the air to move over the wings quickly and in the right direction. You can sort of trade how fast you need the air to go for how ideally the air is flowing over the wings. If you angle the wings just right against the air flow, and/or you bend them out of shape just right with flaps, you can slow down a lot while relying on the air itself to carry your plane. If you're flying against the airflow, you need to go faster. This is usually done during take off and landing. The pilot lowers the flaps when approaching to land and flares the aircraft before touchdown, all to make the air flow efficiently into the wings, thereby allowing the aircraft to slow down without falling straight down like a stone. That's why weather is so important for flights. Pilots need to be ready to call TOGA and go maximum thrust at a moment's notice just in case some crosswind or heat wave or something screws up the direction of the air flow just as they're about to land. Many an admiral cloudberg article has been written due to that sort of thing. You angle the plane just right, slow it down just to the edge of stalling, then some phenomenon happens and increases your stall speed past your current speed...