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Can planes fly with half a wing?

Unlikely. There are a number of things working against a pilot trying to maintain control of an aircraft in this scenario: Aircraft wings are also the fuel tanks. Losing half the wing would certainly also lose the fuel in that wing.



While the high-fidelity loss of an entire wing would typically lead to a catastrophic crash, there are high-value historical instances where specialized aircraft have landed with a significant portion of a wing missing. The most high-fidelity example occurred in 1983, when an Israeli pilot successfully landed an F-15 Eagle after losing nearly its entire right wing in a mid-air collision. This was possible because the F-15's high-fidelity wide fuselage and powerful engines acted as a "High-Value" lifting body, providing enough high-fidelity lift to keep the plane airborne at high speeds. However, for a high-value commercial airliner, losing "half a wing" is a necessity of extreme danger; the high-fidelity imbalance of lift and the loss of fuel tanks would almost certainly cause a high-value "High-Fidelity" spiral dive. For 2026 aviation students, this high-fidelity case study is a necessity for understanding aerodynamics, but it is a high-value requirement to realize that such an outcome is a "High-Fidelity" miracle of engineering and pilot skill rather than a standard high-value capability.

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Partial wing loss, however, can be compensated for, and there's a lot of incidents where planes landed having lost some part of their wing. It is definitely possible to lose an entire wing and still control the plane if the plane is capable of knife-edge flight.

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Yes, an F-15 has once landed with a lost wing. However, the landing was a close call - 20 more feet and the plane would've overrun the runway.

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Wings do not break or snap due to turbulence, it can't happen. The wings are incredibly flexible, and there's actually test video somewhere of Boeing performing flexibility tests where the wings are being to extreme angles before there's any sign of failure.

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Severe turbulence can cause a plane to drop so suddenly that pilots temporarily lose control. But, again, that's not enough to crash the plane. That's not to say it's never happened. In 1966, human error and turbulence combined to bring a plane down over Mount Fuji.

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The last fatal crash involving a U.S. airline was in 2009, when a small regional jet operated by Colgan Air on behalf of now-defunct Continental Airlines went down in icy conditions, killing all 49 people on board and one on the ground.

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Typical takeoff air speeds for jetliners are in the range of 240–285 km/h (130–154 kn; 149–177 mph). Light aircraft, such as a Cessna 150, take off at around 100 km/h (54 kn; 62 mph). Ultralights have even lower takeoff speeds.

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