A small aircraft A is about to land with an airspeed of 80 mi/hr. If the aircraft is encountering a steady side wind of speed 10 mi/hr, what angle (alpha) should the pilot direct the aircraft so the the absolute velocity is parallel to the runway? What is the speed at touchdown?

2 answers

Kinematics
Average Velocity= the change in displacement of the x value time the elapsed time(avg velocity)
Vage=X/T

Average Velocity=initial velocity+final velocity divided by 2(avg velocity for constants)
Vavg=Vi+Vf/2

Acceleration=the change in velocity divided by the elapsed time
a=V/T
I see a lot of verbage, but nothing related to actually solving this problem.

Draw a diagram of the vectors involved. Clearly,

sin α = 10/80, so α = 7.18°

The speed at touchdown will be

80 cosα = 79.37 mi/hr