Concorde Flight Experience, Your chance to fly the fastest commercial airliner ever made.
22/04/2025
High-Speed Airfoils
Transonic flight is the most difficult flight regime for an airplane, because part of the wing is experiencing subsonic airflow and part is experiencing supersonic airflow. For a subsonic airfoil, the aerodynamic center, or the point of support, is approximately 25 percent of the way back from the wing leading edge. In supersonic flight, the aerodynamic center moves back to 50 percent of the wing’s chord, causing some significant changes in the airplane’s control and stability.
If an airplane designed to fly subsonic, perhaps at a Mach number of 0.80, flies too fast and enters transonic flight, some noticeable changes will take place with respect to the airflow over the wing.
