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For those of you who are not pilots or aerospace engineers, here are a few ideas to ponder:
Once you are in the air, you are moving within it and wind speed is only relative to the airplane itself. In other words, let's just say that the airplane is being pulled along by its prop through the air at 80 mph, the speed of the wind over the wing is then 80 mph. Let's also say that that airplane is pointed West for this discussion, so it's westbound. Now, lets say that the air itself is moving over the ground at 100 mph, but it's moving East. In other words, it's a 100 mph wind over the ground moving eastbound (common at altitude in the winter, btw). So what do we have? We have an airplane moving at 80 mph through the wind westbound, but that wind itself is moving Eastbound at 100 mph. The net result is that the airplane will be moving over the ground eastbound at 20 mph (80 mph into a 100 mph headwind equals 20 mph the other way). To someone on the ground, the airplane will seem to be going backward.
Yes, the engine of any airplane is simply there to pull or push it through the air. The wing itself does the flying. If the engine quits, the airplane will not suddenly fall out of the sky, rather the pilot will simply need to start a gentle descent to use gravity to keep the speed up, exactly the way a car can roll endlessly down a hill without the engine running.
A glider can remain airborne indefinitely by descending down through a column or wave of upward moving air that is moving upward faster than the glider is descending.
Just a few basic tidbits.
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