How Far Can Gliders Glide? Planes vs Sailplanes vs Space Shuttle vs Bird vs Paraglider vs HangGlider 

The ISS: hold my beer 🍺

Another way to look at it and the way it was explained to me by a world champion Glider Pilot and my instructor Ingo Renner the ratio simply means for every X amount of Meters traveled forwards you will lose 1 Meter of Altitude. I.e. 45:1 means for every 45 meters traveled forwards you will lose 1 meter of height, whereas 8:1 means for every 8 meters forward you will lose 1 meter of height/altitude. The best modern gliders are usually between 35:1 to 60:1 but there are a few going all the way up to 70:1 which is absolutely incredible. Various factors contribute to this in gliders, how much life is experienced along the way (or Sink) how much weight is in the cockpit, and is it a single seat or 2 seats. Carrying Water Ballast etc. These Glide Ratios boasted by Sailplane manufacturers are theoretical Ratios. this is because small amounts of lift and sink can be experienced along the way. even in calm morning conditions, there can be minute amounts that a human can not even feel. So it's kind of hard to test in a real flight environment. I suppose wind tunnel testing with aerofoil could give better data but I know nothing at all about that.

I really wish I had found this video two years ago! I fly hang gliders and think your 16:1 figure is correct or very close to the specs of the best competition hang gliders made today. But here's something that will be fun to relay. Back in the mid 1980s, I flew a Wills Wing Harrier 147 (it had an approx 7:1 glide), while waiting for delivery of a new hang glider. One nice day I was flying above the ridge about 20 miles NE of Wurtsboro, NY - which has some nice sailplane activity. Well, I was flying along and a sailplane approached my location. I was either in a thermal or found one as the sailplane approached. The Harrier had this amazing ability to fly slow in a fairly high banked 360. Knowing this I centered myself in the core and proceeded to go up. Well, the sailplane got the picture and started to core the same thermal. Unfortunately, the sailplane (not a low performance model) could not get its turn radius anywhere near as tight as mine and I was out climbing it very nicely! I learned from that experience that sailplanes with "super" performance can, at times, be left behind by a simpler more basic glider. I've also done a bit of XC flying and can glide further knowing that that "tiny" field up ahead is big enough for me to land in if I don't catch a thermal before getting there. If I were in a sailplane I may have had to land 10 miles back at a nice safe large flat field.

Birds have the advantage of being really light and so being able to use much weaker lift than human-carrying gliders

Solar Impulse (long-range experimental solar-powered aircraft) has 37:1 glide ratio. Amazing video btw.

That was a really great presentation. May I also add something to your numbers regarding airliners. We typically allow 3 (nautical) miles per thousand feet. So that will be a glide ratio of 18:1. But this is an ‘economic’ value. It’s a value that (very, very roughly) takes into account maintenance costs, navigation charges, schedule, missed connections and the minimal fuel (plus the closing time of the bar). So for me a typical descent would start at M0.72-0.78 changing to 270/290 kts at idle power. A best glide, idle (or zero thrust) would be done at 190 kias (depending on weight could be at much as 215) and yield a decent (or sink) rate of around 800 fpm. Therefore my aircraft could easily achieve 24-25:1. But we don’t do this unless we are really, really early. Believe it or not, both engines out requires a greater speed to keep the fans turning for a quicker relight and/or to turn the RAT (Ram Air Turbine).

Talking about the limiting factor the roll rate. Hanglider pilots, thermals averaged as large as typically a big house. The largest I incountered was N East of Ventura, Pine mountain a cross country spot. Bigger than a stadium, my verio was pegged but it was twice I have ever encountered . You get to cloud base. You encounter cloud suck. So now you can race around full speed bar down to your thigh. 45 Mikes a hour , air speed. Three dimensional fun. Flown with eagles under my wing. Mom and kid. The kid showed off and looped me three times. Then looked at me. He was showing me I wasn't shit. It was the coolest thing I have ever seen. Thanks Mr. ROGELLO. I wanted to fly from when I was 5. I would climb a tree approximately 60 feet tall. I was small. I could get near the top. The wind would blow I would sway. The birds would fly by. I knew then. I WOULD fly like a bird. Just another fortunate American could finding his dearest dreams. My Wills Wing Sport was made in 86 . Anyway...

You forgot a mailbag. It has a glide ratio of 10:1. The Lockerbie Bombing of Pan Am flight 103 happened at aprox. 10km altitude, and a mailbag was found 100km from the site, giving it a glide ratio of 10:1.

I restored a gull wing 1935 vintage glider - 2 seater Kranich I designed by Hans Jacobs. It had an L/D of 23:1 but flew 2 flights of 7hrs 30 mins one weekend. Currently fly a 172 and at 8:1 keep an eye open for suitable fields!

Wow! At one time, I thought 35:1 was high performance. Just goes to show how long I’ve been away from soaring. Great video!

Hello Tim :) I'd like to bring up that a hang glider flex-wing top of the line can't never get to 16:1 glide ratio, perhaps you are referring to hang glider rigid-wing which is a different type of hang glider category. The rigid-wing has longer wing span and the pilot uses flaps as well as flaperons on the wings in order to control the flight, as opposed to hang glider flex-wing which has no contoll mechanism whatsoever: only by shifting the body wheight allows you to fly. The longer wing span of a rigid-wing requires mechanical flaperons in order to be able to roll the hang glider. In fact in competition they race under 2 different scoring charts. The most common type of hang glider is the flex-wing and can achieve aprox 13:1 glide ratio. Cheers!

Do not forget wingsuits... bigger ones can get 3:1 or even a bit more!! Congrats, great glide chart!!!

The old joke about the Space Shuttle Orbiter was that it had the glide ratio of a cast iron Frisbee. And yeah, "only" a quarter million NZ dollars. That's about the cost of a traditional family house in a less expensive neighborhood here in the US. It is worth noting that minimum sink rate enters into thermal and cross country performance as well. Here in the States, it's fairly common for the better performing hang gliders and even "Air Chair" gliders (like the G.O.A.T. series) to do multi-hour thermal and ridge flights from a foot or hill roll launch, and accomplish cross country tasks as well. A G.O.A.T. doesn't have an awesome glide ratio, but it's *slow,* so minimum sink is quite low. Might take a long time to make a 100 km cross country -- but it'll climb in a whisper of a thermal.

Just recently mused about where these glide ratios have gone because back in time good ratios were in the mid 30 and as a model sailplane constructor and pilot we aimed to get as close as possible of the real ones. Amazed to see how high the performance of these Super-Orchids are today and the timing of your presentation couldn't be better. You perfectly answered my question!

I have been through the whole spectrum, beginning with the original 4:1 Rogallo wing in 1973 up through high-performance hang gliders and early paragliders and even more than a passing acquaintance with regular gliders (never really high-performance gliders, though). While I have had more than one encounter with "an unintentional glider", i.e. an 'engine' failure in a single-engine aircraft (well, 'pilot failure' actually, fuel exhaustion in one case and lubricating oil exhaustion in the second case, both being my own, personal screw-ups, no excuses available). The rest of my career was in multi-engine aircraft and, needless to say, my only 'engine failures' in those were in a simulator. True, they were almost always just after V1, but the worst that COULD happen was a sweaty ride around the compulsory IFR single-engine approach with a mandatory single-engine missed approach followed by another single-engine approach and landing at minimums. This is supposed to be a routine, but it is also takes a lot of concentration and effort! The absurd glide ratio of modern high-performance gliders is good for only one thing: To get you from one thermal to the next thermal, fast and with minimum altitude loss. That is long-distance thermaling territory only. For your everyday 'inadvertent' glider situation the glide ratio is a double edged sword. A sleek aircraft will allow you to glide further, but nailing a landing spot can be hard. A short-aspect-ratio aircraft like Piper PA-22 Tri-Pacer (aka the flying piano) will not have a great gliding range, but your landing spot will appear a LOT larger because of the steeper approach angle. The point: Whatever equipment you are flying, you will (if you are a good pilot) plan according to you aircraft's capabilities (or limitations). A good glide angle can be a boon - or a curse! The. birds will beat us any day, under any circumstances, they have control that we cannot even BEGIN to dream of!

Thank you - I've been looking for a chart like yours for yonks. Most informative explination of glider dynamics

I would like to say I really enjoy your channel. The things you teach I use in my soaring, and helps me to fly better and safer. Thanks, and please continue to post these videos. Also, I like the quiet and mellow manner of your talks; very informal and at the same time both detailed and understandable.

The Sud Aviation Caravelle is known for having the best glide ratio of all airliners. She have more than 23:1 glide ratio, which is similar to many gliders of its time. A test of its capacities have been made where the plane climbed to 41 000 feets over Paris and then glide to the city of Dijon with engines sets to idle. The distance between the cities is roughly 260 km.

Love your intros Timbodini! that sort of suprised look you have - like us 'RU-vid lot' have wandered in on off the street and caught you just about to give a talk. Priceless! Much love dude…

never heard about glide ratios so well explained. brilliant presentation, thank you.

Great video comparison! I didn't know about the Concordia, amazing. I own a Stemme S12, 53:1 with side by side seating, 25 meter span

I have seen the Concordia in a contest at Hobbs New Mexico while crewing for another Canadian Pilot. Watched several launches and the wing sweep is amazing to see. The wingspan seen alongside a 15 meter ship is almost comical. Nice video.

Your content is awesome, thanks mate!

Having about 300 hours in ASW-22BL I assure you that roll control rate is not as big a problem as yaw control rate... you can bank the glider right over relatively quickly, but due to adverse yaw you’d never get it to actually turn without pegging the rudder for a while before and after you put in the roll input

Awesome ! Incredible glide ratios !

Nice work as usual, Tim. Gimli glider was the consequence of confusion over fuel in kg or lbs: the engines stopped as they ran out of fuel. The 2017 OSTIV Congress was of the view that 100:1 is possible with boundary layer blowing.

You’re awesome thanks for interesting me into gliding! Trouble is there are so many amazing things to do in life and I don’t feel like I have enough time to do it all if you know that feeling. Anyways best of luck on your adventures

Thanks for the cameo 😁

Great vid/explanation. Thanks for sharing.

nice vid! lol. my Schweitzer glider had 23:1 glide ratio, that i had years ago. amazing the advances.

I've never flown anything of any description, but for some unknown reason You Tube brought me here. :-) I just wanted to say, as an experienced trainer, that your delivery and presentation is absolutely spot on - the sort of thing I aspire to. Edited to add: To a layman, these glide ratios are amazing and far greater than I was expecting. For example if you were towed to 2000 feet and never encountered any thermals at all, one of the decent gliders at the top of your chart could glide 30km 😲

This is a very informative comparison - thanks. I didn't realize how much more efficiently a 787 glides compared to earlier airliners. It'll help me "talk down" some nervous flyers. And enjoy our little club glider at a "mere" 30:1 ratio. ;-)

Thank you, very informative and fun comparison! 👍😎

Thanks for this video!

Thanks Tim great stuff keep it up

Well they say you learn something new every day and today I certainly did. I had no idea there were gliders with a 26 metres wingspan, I thought the maximum were 18 metres! Thanks for this very informative video.

Keep them coming Tim….. I am a dedicated fan. T.

Cool. Useful information! Thanks

I have been away from soaring for some time due to medical issues, but I really enjoyed the LAK-17a that I owned with another pilot which claimed a 50:1 best glide ratio, and also belonging to a syndicate of five of us who owned and shared a DuoDiscus which claimed a 44:1 glide ratio. Both very nice sailplanes. Having access to both aircraft allowed me to just about always find one of the other available to fly, and allowed access to both solo and two seat sailplanes. The group of caring and sharing pilot/owners worked out well, allowed flying solo or with a guest, and we took care of the sailplanes quite well. It was almost like owning the two sailplanes at a fraction of the costs, while sharing with friends.

Great information I had no idea that some of those planes had that much glide distance.

Great video, Thanks!

Very interesting. Thank you.

See if you can correct in the subtitles for other languages that on several occasions it appears "paragliding" instead of "glider". The same, it is perfectly understood.

Thats an interesting topic! Nice video!

Excellent - looking forward to placing my order for one of these "much lower cost" 18m JS3!

I went solo in 1969 in a Slingsby T31, best performance - an awesome *18.5:1* at 39.5 kts.

Thank you from a pure flight enthusiast/inventor!

Hah! 32:1 is still a pretty hot ship in the context of my flying: it's the top end of the range of most of the gliders that I've flown - most of my time is K-8b. I am impressed to learn that hang gliders can do 18:1 now, that puts them right up with some nice old thing like a Grunau IIb

Thanks ~ things I've always wanted to know ~ and now we can be properly informed. Thanks again!

Answered many questions I had about aviation :)

In fact, the space shuttle glide ratio varied greatly throughout its flight profile, as should be obvious from the fact it starts to descend from a vacuum and has quite a high VNE. :)

FWIW the 747 Classics that I used to fly managed about 18:1. A standard descent plan was a 'three to one' drop, or for every thousand feet up, you planned on going three nautical miles, or about 18,228' for every 1,000' in altitude. When we were heavy, you'd have to add a few miles as it was actually harder to get them to come down.

Albatrosses apply the concept of 'dynamic soaring' when they dive and climb in and out of the winds between the waves, giving them an endless amount of energy to cross oceans.

The albatross is just an amazing nature idea. They mostly just fly.

Nice overview

Lak-20 also a 26 meter oppen class glyder has 60:1 ratio, love to see that bird fly, what an awesome video comparison of diferent glyde ratios. P.s. you got new subscriber :-)

Cool video. Great idea. I would have included the SGS 1-26 as the bottom rung glider - since there are still plenty of them around (at least in the USA, anyway)

There is another aspect in which a paraglider comes very closed to a bird. When they are still sitting on the ground you would not expect this thing would be able to fly. But the very moment the bird spreads its wings and the cloth of the paraglider gets his form by the air filling up its chambers, then suddenly the magic happens. "Hey, it has wings!" and "hey, it can actually fly!"

Nice pictures and interesting comparison but I think it is very important to compare the best glide ratio by indicating the corresponding air speed ;-) good flights

Thank you for this! Glidr development has beeen astonishing since I stopped. Many vintage gliders are still being flown, it would be interesting to include a few, especially from the wood age, e.g. K6 or ASK13. Not much better than a Dreamliner, surprisingly! I did my first solo flight in a Slingsby Prefect, which had a sink ratio more like your Cessna!

9:19 Almost fooled me with the Ventus fight jet xD

I learned so much today

For the several last aircraft mentioned,isn't the proper term soaring plane? You use glider a lot,but that brings to mind a WW2 towed aircraft for inserting troops,which cannot gain altitude when released from the tow cable. Soaring planes can utilize thermals for extending their flights.

Nice to see a comparison of all the gliders in the world. Wow, 28m wingspan is insane! Gliders seem to also be going in the opposite direction with the new (since 2015) 13.5m class. I’m interested in FES gliders, so was just yesterday reading about the mini LAK-FES. Pretty amazing that they can now get a L/D of 44 out of a 13.5m wing! For more info look at: Mini and Me Soaring February 2019

very interesting thank you

A lot of pilots here in the States still fly 1-26s (22-1 on a good day) and older gliders with similar performance. They still do very well, although going upwind is quite a challenge because their best glide speed is quite slow. The speed at which best glide occurs is important (higher is usually better) as is the slowest speed it can reasonably fly (slower means it can turn smaller circles, important for working thermals, which are often small). Airliners have decent glide ratios, but those occur at high speeds, which means they descend like rocks and have fairly limited time before they must land.

What a great presentation. 75:1 I had no idea, amazing!

Really good

the Albatross can stay aloft for weeks or months, sleeping on the wing. they can travel thousands of kilometers via dynamic soaring. they expend as nearly little energy flying as they do at rest. : )

Very interesting and I'm enjoying your channel. For comparison, do you know what the glide ratio was for the Wright Brothers' Kitty Hawk?

Great comparison.

Thanks for the video! I am a hangglider pilot. I don’t think modern hangglider can reach 16:1. Maybe in theory? With the drag from the harness and all wires, I think we are just 10:1 at the best. When we looking for landing zone, we will keep 3:1 to 5:1 glide ratio in mind for safest choice.

You're giving the Gimli Glider a bad wrap. I was a captain on them at Air Canada and actually flew it after the Gimli event. It's glide ratio is about 20:1 according to Boeing. I now fly a Silent2 Electro self launching glider with a 40:1 glide ratio.

Good comparson Tim. I worked out the 737NG to be 17:1 but that was with residual idle thrust being produced on the way down so hard to determine the real L/D.

I am absolutely chocked to see how well a commercial jet can glide. 20-1 is insane especially compared with a Cessna 8-1.

Of course, how far a glider can go also depends on it's speed, so ability to penetrate wind. it will not matter in all circumstances, but in some will make a huge difference. and what not many people talk about is sink rate, which can help you stay in the air the longest from a given height in still air, and take the best advantage of a thermal if you happen to be in one. if it is a powered glider, low sink rate will help it to climb at a higher rate, use less total power, and stay in the air much longer. same principles go for powered aircraft. great considerations to think about. great video! thx!

Very cool

Amazing.

I did my first solo in in 1967 in a Schleicher K4. I think it had a glide ratio of around 15:1. From a 1,500 ft winch launch it wasn't so much a circuit but more of a spiral dive! I later flew a Grunau Primary which had no cockpit and a glide ratio of about 7:1. Exciting? Yes! Back then 20:1 was a hotship.

Fun comparison. But I think birds have the distinct advantage since they can flap their wings to stay aloft... not so for gliders! I’m forever jealous of hawks and vultures- able to stay up on the tiniest of thermal! I watched a vulture glide for about 3 miles, never flapped its wings!

The iconic Schweizer 2-22 (17:1) and 1-26 (23:1) have much lower ratios. If you started flying in the 80’s or earlier, ratios in the mid 20’s were the norm and 30 and above were ‘high performance’. I’ve some great memories of the 1-26 as it was so light and easy to fly.

Hi Tim. I think that 11.3 GR of a paraglider is a little bit exaggerated. To be fair since few years manufacturers usually haven't even mentioned glide ratio nor speeds at all! In case of my Skywalk Tequila 4 I have things like aspect radio, wingspan, full line plan but not speed at all. Polish company 'Dudek paragliders' shows minimal sink rate and trim / max speed but not GR. All that is mostly caused by lack of good measurements techniques, and due to low airspeed GR don't even matter as much as conditions Youre flying in. For Dudek Optic 2 which is an intermediate wing minimum sink is 1 m/s (with uncertainty of .2m/s) and the trim speed is 10m/s with uncertainty about .5m/s. This give us GR of 9 if we take into account that minimum sink rate is at airspeed slightly lower than trim. This is what seems to be a right answer for a question 'how far the paraglider can fly'. About 9 to 10 GR seems reasonable for average EN-B wing of "mainline" manufacturer like Skywalk, Ozone, Advance, Dudek etc. Of course there is stuff like Ozone ENZO 2, which might have even more than 11.3 but this is full competition rig for very highly skilled pilots. It very easily collapses and if collapse it usually end with throwing a reserve as it is very hard to restore normal flight afterwards. But anyway. Paragliding is not about poor performance in flight :) Paragliding is all about 'magic moments' You get during the flight which the glider doesn't give You :)

I remember how it was to put a Nimbus glider together. Each wing was in two sections and they were HEAVY to handle on the ground. But about 60:1 in the air. I once ran out of thermal on the last leg of a triangle, and while I was struggling at 300 meters in the club's LS4, a Nimbus with two persons passed me about 30 meters lower gliding in a straight path - not towards my club site about 5 kilometers away but towards the nearest club about 12-15 kilometers away. I had to land in a sugar beet field while the Nimbus made it home.

1:8 is a nice to have GL of paraglider 1:10,5 for 2 liner 1:14.5 is for a hangglider average, calm air

Thks for keeping it simple; & then a negative glide ratio balloon is the ultimate glider (yeaps, I dos cheap ;)

I like this video. I would like to get a chart of your summary.

Would have been nice to include some of the vintage gliders, to see what our forebears had to work with. A Grunau Baby, say, a Minimoa, or a Ka 6

Hi there! Im a glider pilot and this season im going to do my first solo. These videos really help flying more save 👍

The glide ratio given for a paraglider is a bit generous. Typical pilots might see something like 8-10:1. But the upside is the ease of transport. You just pack it up and carry it in your back where ever you want to go 😊

Helicopter auto rotation: looks like about 1:1 when you're doing it.

I did my first solo in a Slingsby T21B maybe 1 in 18 at best but I survived the experience.

Great stuff, except as you know its more complicated than that. It's not just your glide angle its how fast you are flying down it. When I was flying my hang glider I might not have had the glide angle of the commercial airliner, but I wasn't flying down my glide angle as fast either. Which brings me on to something else, we have a range of speeds open to us, my hang glider was relatively slow, so the speed to fly for maximum distance over the ground rather depends on which way the wind is blowing. If its behind me, time in the air is more important and I would fly at Min sink, if its in my face the normal best glide speed is going to be too slow (in fact I'll qualify that , I might actually be going backwards :-) )

*Laughs in Schweizer* I trained in a 2-33A and am doing my initial hours building in a 1-26. I know Schweizers are a lot more common in North America; many U.S. and Canadian glider pilots train in them. They both top out at about 23:1. 30:1 seems like the world when you're flying one. Also, as a fun fact, the best powered aircraft is probably the Rutan Global Flier at ~37:1. Unsurprisingly, it has many glider-like features.

These glide ratios are all based on flying in still air. Other things come into play, such as tailwinds and headwinds which will extend or reduce the glider's range. If conditions are thermic, it's possible to 'dolphin' along to take advantage of energy lines and cloud streets, to cover great distances without stopping to turn which will significantly increase your cross-country speed.

Related to Ratio 60:1 Im pretty sure you are talking about the ASH25 instead of ASH 26, aren't you? Thanks for all your vid's, makes knowledge and fun! Cheers Michael from Germany

Hopefully in the future, photovoltaic cells, batteries can be added to help give a little bit more altitude.

Canada is actually the leader in fuel starved jetliners gliding to a safe landing. In 2001 Air Transat Flight 236 was on its way from Toronto to Lisbon overnight on Aug. 23-24 with 291 passengers and crew of 13. The plane was an Airbus A330-200. It ran out of fuel due to a leak and the aircraft glided 98 miles from a height of 32,000 ft to a safe landing in the Azores. Something like 16:1 glide ratio

A Flying Squirrel has a Glide Ratio of 100:1, but they are short distance flyers. And a condor/vulture has a Glide Ratio of over 70:1 as they spend the day circling about without flapping their wings. Their problem is that they are high altitude flyers getting there is an issue for them without a thermal. But once they are up there, over 10k ft. They stay up there.

Practicality comes into play. Try landing a massive machine in a Welsh field 😀. A Duo Discus is all the glider anyone ever needs !

The coolest thing I was told about some of the extreme high-performance gliders was that you could glide to and beyond the horizon so your choice of outlanding options was anything you could see. I'm not sure how practical this is though.