The Broom

The Broom: A fixed wing aircraft?
Today my topic centers around the properties of the flying broom in Harry Potter, and whether a broom could be considered a fixed wing aircraft (a conventional airplane).

A fixed wing aircraft relies on forward thrust to create movement across a lifting surface (the wing). Because of this, any time the aircraft decrease its forward velocity, its lift decreases as well.



The flying brooms in Harry Potter are quite clearly not fixed wing aircraft. First, the brooms can fly without moving forward (they can hover). Second, the broom can stop on a dime, something no fixed aircraft can do.

Would it be possible then that the brooms in Harry Potter are more similar to Rotary wing aircraft (helicopters)? While that appears to be the case, there are many things that the broom can do, that a helicopter can't. The brooms are able to climb simply by pointing them directly towards the sky. A helicopter can sustain a climb at most a 45 degree angle towards the sky (AoA). The broom also can gain speed when placed at high levels of Angle of Attack (The number of degrees the nose of your aircraft is pointed above the horizon). A helicopter can't do this.

The best real-world representation of the broom comes in the form of a VTOL fixed wing aircraft such as the Yak-141 Freestyle (NATO Designation) or AV-8 Harrier. The broom exhibits the ability to fly like a plane, but take off and land vertically as well as accomplish manuevers only possible with "thrust-vectoring."

If you would like to know more about how an aircraft or helicopter flies