When you’re driving your car, you’re probably regularly looking at the speedometer to make sure you comply with the local speed limits. The method by which it works is simple enough: the rotation of the wheels is sent mechanically via a cable to a dial on the dash, or an electronic sensor counts the rotations of the drivetrain and an electronically-controlled needle or display shows the speed.

But what about if you were in an aircraft, and the wheels had nothing to do with how fast you were going? How would you even begin to measure speed? There are two ways: there’s a convenient solution to this problem rooted in simple fluid mechanics, and a far-more-complex modern solution. Today, we’ll explore how planes and helicopters are able to figure out how fast they’re going, by the old ways and the new.

Classical Methods

A key thing most aviators want to know is how fast their aircraft is going. Specifically, it’s nice to know how fast it’s moving relative to the airstream around it, which is referred to as airspeed. This is important, because it’s the aircraft’s velocity relative to the flow, such as wind, that determines the performance of the airfoils, how much lift is generated, and whether or not the aircraft is approaching a stall condition where it might fall out of the sky.

Measuring airspeed is most commonly achieved with the use of a device called a Pitot tube. The pitot tube is a tube with a hole in one end that points directly into the airflow in the direction of travel of the aircraft.

As air flows in, it reaches a dead end and the flow slows to a stop, or stagnates, since it has nowhere to go. This allows a pressure sensor or a manometer or other device to measure the stagnation pressure at this point. The stagnation pressure measurement is related to the flowspeed of the incoming air since the kinetic energy of the flow is converted to pressure as the flow comes to a halt.

A secondary tube, pointing perpendicular to the airflow, is then used to measure the static pressure of the surrounding air, without the ram effect of the air being forced in by the aircraft’s forward motion. Then, it’s possible to calculate the velocity of the aircraft relative to the airstream by plugging the stagnation pressure and static pressure into a rearranged Bernoulli’s equation.  If the pitot tube and static tube are hooked up to electronic sensors, the airspeed can be calculated electronically, and fed to a display or digital gauge.

Alternatively, it’s possible to effectively do this “calculation” mechanically. In earlier days, static and stagnation pressure captured by each tube would be fed to a gauge. Inside, the stagnation pressure would be fed to a diaphragm which moved due to the difference relative to the static pressure which is fed into the gauge body, and the movement of the diaphragm would, via a simple mechanism, shift the needle on the gauge.

A small General Aviation aircraft might mount a single pitot tube on the aircraft, feeding the air speed instrument in the cockpit. Commercial aircraft might mount two or more for safety’s sake, in case one becomes inoperable, while large airliners may have four or even more to provide a high level of redundancy and error checking. Heaters are commonly included on pitot tubes to ensure they can be kept free of ice, which can otherwise completely block a tube and make it impossible to obtain an airspeed reading.

For pilots, not knowing how fast (or slow) the aircraft is going can be highly dangerous, as it can lead to entering unstable flight regimes such as stall. Thus, it’s imperative that the pitot tubes remain unobstructed and functional for safe flight. Many aircraft accidents have occurred because of blocked or malfunctioning pitot tubes or airspeed instruments.

The New Way

Of course, you could fuss about with pitot tubes and pressure sensors and deicing measures, but that’s all very fiddly and old hat. There is an entirely different way to figure out a plane’s speed, though it’s only been available for the last few decades. It’s as simple as throwing a GNSS receiver on the aircraft.

Yes, whether your particular poison is GPS, Baidou, GLONASS, or Galileo, any major satellite navigation system will be able to tell you the speed of your receiver. Simply measuring the change in the receiver’s position over time is enough to calculate out the speed, and any off-the-shelf receiver will present this information as standard. It’s generally not used as a primary indicator in aircraft, because it reports ground speed, not airspeed, the latter being more relevant for aviation purposes. Still, it can prove to be a useful sense check when traditional airspeed indicators are non-operative or reporting confusing data, and GNSS devices are widely used on many aircraft today.

Flying High

If you’ve ever wondered how an aircraft measures its speed as it floats through the amorphous gas cloud we call an atmosphere, now you know. Even to this day, where electronics and computer wizardry control our fanciest aircraft, airspeed measurements are still done with the same simple physics, just with some fancier sensors for help. The fundamentals haven’t changed at all. Now you know, you can always dig deeper into the many other rich applications of Bernoulli’s equation and fluid mechanics in general. Happy learning.