List of aviation, aerospace and aeronautical terms
A
glossary of terms used in relation to
aircraft,
in alphabetical order.
No manufacturers or model names, please.
aerodyne
- A heavier-than-air craft, deriving its lift from motion.
aeronaut
- Pilot or crew of lighter-than-air craft.
- A powered aircraft that derives its lift from the movement of air over fixed lifting surfaces. (Also airplane)
- A lighter-than-air craft, such as a balloon or airship. Its lift is caused by buoyancy relative to surrounding air.
- A vehicle that can travel through the air.
airplane
- A powered aircraft that derives its lift from the movement of air over fixed lifting surfaces. (Also aeroplane)
- A lighter-than-air craft that can be steered and propelled through the air. (Also dirigible)
- A rotor-craft with unpowered blades - it requires a separate engine to provide forward motion before lift is developed.
aviator
- Pilot or crew of an aircraft.
aviatrix
- Female aviator (Obsolete, potentially offensive in modern use.)
- An unpowered lighter-than-air craft.
- An aeroplane with two similar-sized wings (or pairs of wings), exactly or approximately in vertical alignment.
- Non-rigid airship.
- The dimension of a wing parallel to the direction of motion.(Compare with span and thickness.)
dirigible
- A lighter-than-air craft that can be steered and propelled through the air. From the French word dirigeable meaning steerable. (Also airship)
- An unpowered fixed-wing heavier-than-air craft. (Also sailplane)
- A rotor craft with one or more sets of powered blades.
- Instrument flight rules; a regulatory term describing a flight which may be conducted in conditions where the pilot cannot see outside the aircraft (e.g. in cloud and fog) and must fly only by his instruments. Compare to VFR.
- An aeroplane with one wing (or pairs of wings).
pitch
- A measure of the degree to which an aircraft's nose tilts up or down. Also a measure of the angle of attack of a propeller.
powerplant
- A powered aircrafts source of power, usually either a jet engine or a conventional engine and propeller.
roll
- Rotation about an axis aligned with the direction in which the aircraft is flying.
rotorcraft
- An aircraft that derives its lift from rotating lifting surfaces (usually called blades)
- An unpowered fixed-wing heavier-than-air craft. (Also glider)
sesquiplane
- An aeroplane with two wings (or pairs of wings), where one (often the lower) is significantly smaller than the other in span and/or chord.
- The dimension of a wing parallel to the direction of motion. (Compare with chord and thickness.)
- a condition of an airplane or an airfoil in which lift decreases and drag increases due to the separation of airflow.
thickness
- The vertical dimension of a wing. (Compare with span and chord.)
triplane
- An aeroplane with three similar-sized wings (or pairs of wings), exactly or approximately in vertical alignment.
- Visual flight rules; a regulatory term describing flights that are conducted only in conditions where the pilot can see the ground, or in some instances is flying in the free space above a cloud. Compare to IFR.
- A lifting surface of an airplane/aeroplane or sailplane.
yaw
- Rotation in a horizontal plane about the normally vertical axis - turning to left or right.