Sitting in an airborne airplane, why does it seem like you are hardly moving?

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me69dou2

all motion is relative.
clouds go by slowly cause the are moving in the same direction as you if you are in say, the jet or gulf streams. thats called a tailwind. in a head wind, the would fly by faster.

Peter D

because you are travelling at a steady speed in a straight line with no contact except air.

Techwing

Everything you are looking at is far away, and you are seeing very large spaces from this distance, so it's difficult to discern movement. This creates the impression that you are hardly moving.

You can see the same illusion while riding in a car if you look out the window at distant mountains. You'll notice that you seem to not be moving at all in relation to the mountains. However, in a car, you're on the ground, and you can always look at things right next to the road, which are small and close by and therefore appear to be moving very quickly. This enhances the impression of speed in a car. But in an airplane, nothing is close by, so there's no way to make this comparison, and so everything is far away and it seems that you aren't moving at all.

You can prove that you're moving fast in an airplane, though. Look out the window at some fixed point on the airplane itself, and then compare that to scenery behind it. Imagine a car down on the ground moving as fast as the point on the airplane appears to be moving past the scenery. That will give you an accurate impression of your real speed, and you'll see that you are moving very fast indeed. The front edge of the wing or an engine works very well for this, if you compare it to the ground behind it. Ideally, if there's a highway down there, comparing a point on the airplane to the highway will make it very clear that you are zooming along at quite an amazing speed (around ten times faster than a car, or better).

Ralph T

Optical illusion-you are so high and with a wide field of view,the ground objects seem to pass by slowly.
The reverse is true when you are on the ground and watch a plane fly over head.
It slowly approaches and seems to speed up as it gets closer and then zips by and slowly disappears in the distance,but its speed never changed.
With clouds,they can stretch for miles.
Also clouds drift with the wind currents and can appear to be moving along with the plane.
Like riding in a car at night and the moon and stars appear to be moving with the car.

not illusion. next time you pay attention, when the clouds are very close to the plane, you'll see them passing by fast.

indiana

its just like a car, because everything around you is moving at the same speed you are.

Dean Bean

because its pressurized

Riley S

The simple answer would be that you're moving so fast that it seems slow, but that is kind of false.

As the world rotates and revolves, the atmosphere drags along with it. This is what keeps bird in flight, and, in turn, keeps planes in flight. The world is turning at a very high rate of speed, so on a plane, you may be moving at a almost equal rate.

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