GW_04
This "downforce" you talk off only has effect on the earth (or aircraft floor in this case) when close enough to ground effect pressure wave. ie- you will not get crushed by a 400 ton 747 admiring it from below on short final.
Whaaaaaat! Wrong Wrong Wrong. Gravity doesn’t decrease simply because you are not touching the ground. If this was true the moon would fling off into space and the Earth wouldn’t experience tides. Infact the Universe wouldn’t exist as we know it. I think you need to get yourself a good book on physics or have a search of the Internet and have a look at what gravity is and its relationship to two masses and the distance between them.
As for your argument why don’t we get crushed under a B747 when it flies over? Well it is because the weight of it is distributed over the entire Earth by the atmosphere, not just the parcel of air underneath it.
We all know about how lift is generated, blah blah blah. What you forget is that in this Universe that we live in, for every force there is an equal and opposite force. In this case gravity acting on the mass. The small distance the bird is from the ground would have little effect on the gravitational force, therefore little effect on the weight. The next thing you will be telling us is that there is no such thing as gravity, the Earth sucks.
