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Old 12th Jun 2017, 08:56
  #16 (permalink)  
eckhard
 
Join Date: May 2005
Location: France
Age: 69
Posts: 1,143
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This is why an airliner's fuselage looks perfectly horizontal (because it actually flies near 0 AoA) during cruise,
I'm neither an aerodynamicist nor a structural engineer but all the airliners that I have flown seem to cruise with the nose about 3 degrees above the horizon.

By 'horizon', I mean a reference that equates to a level attitude, not the visible horizon which at typical cruising altitudes is depressed by about 3 degrees below the true 'horizontal' due to the curvature of the earth.

If I am right, that would imply that the wings are actually mounted at close to zero angle of incidence. Can any structural engineer or test pilot shed some light?
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