Plain English Meaning

A drawing that shows how wind pushes the airplane sideways during flight. By sketching three arrows — one for the wind, one for where the nose is pointed and how fast the airplane moves through the air, and one for the actual path over the ground — the pilot can work out how much to angle into the wind and how long the trip will really take.

Full Definition

A graphical method of flight planning in which three vectors — the wind, the aircraft's true heading and true airspeed, and the desired track and groundspeed — are drawn to scale to solve for unknown values such as wind correction angle, true heading, and groundspeed. Each vector represents a direction and a magnitude, and when joined head-to- they form a that shows how the wind moves the aircraft across the ground.