A DC-10 jumbo jet maintains an airspeed of 550 miles per hour in a southwesterly direction.

Question

A DC-10 jumbo jet maintains an airspeed of 550 miles per hour in a southwesterly direction. The velocity of the jet stream is a constant 93 miles per hour from the west. Find the actual speed and direction of the aircraft.

 

 

Please Help!!!

Answer 1

Draw a free body diagram that represents the vectors of the plane and Jetstream.  Since the Jetstream comes from the west, the vector head of the Jetstream will point east.  The vector tail of the plane and the Jetstream share the same point.  From there, draw a parallelogram using those vectors.  Draw a vector from the point where the tail of the two vectors meet to the opposite point of the parallelogram. That will be the resultant vector of the plane.  Based on this, the actual direction will be southeast.  As for the actual speed, you can use laws of sine or cosine, however you need the angle of the plane that is initially in the southwesterly direction.