Flying Along on a Cushion of Grease

For airplanes, ground effect comes into play only during certain brief parts of a flight. Not so for wingships.

Thursday, February 08, 2024 at 11:36 AM ET

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Despite considerable government support in the early 1990s, the Russian ekranoplan program, of which this Strizh was a part, came to nothing. Blame it on ground effect.

Key Takeaways:

Ground effect is an aerodynamic phenomenon where flying very close to a surface significantly reduces induced drag, a principle originally explored by "ekranoplans" (WIG ships).
This effect primarily impacts drag, not lift, and is commonly encountered by pilots during takeoff and landing, as well as by helicopters.
While ground effect can cause "floating" during landing due to reduced aerodynamic braking, a dangerous "ground effect trap" can occur during takeoff if an aircraft becomes airborne but lacks sufficient power to climb out of ground effect.
Factors like high density altitude, heavy weight, and short runways increase the risk of this trap, leaving the aircraft unable to accelerate or gain altitude.

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In 1993, an assignment from FLYING took me unusually far afield. Somewhere east of Moscow, in the center of a land that had recently ceased to be the Soviet Union and was trying to figure out what it meant to be Russia again, I clung with one hand to my camera and the other to the doorframe of a radial-engined Antonov biplane as it flew low over the Volga.

Alongside and below me flew a Strizh. My Russian dictionary, a relic of college days, translates strizh as “martin” or “sand martin.” Another source offers “martlet,” which is certainly incorrect. Some kind of bird, at any rate. But this strizh was not a bird. It was an airplane of a special kind that the Russians called an ekranoplan.