Vertical stabilizer in the context of "Sabena Flight 548"

The McDonnell Douglas DC-10 is an American trijet wide-body aircraft manufactured by McDonnell Douglas.The DC-10 was intended to succeed the DC-8 for long-range flights. It first flew on August 29, 1970; it was introduced on August 5, 1971, by American Airlines.

The trijet has two turbofans on underwing pylons and a third one at the base of the vertical stabilizer.The twin-aisle layout has a typical seating for 270 in two classes.The initial DC-10-10 had a 3,500-nautical-mile [nmi] (6,500 km; 4,000 mi) range for transcontinental flights. The DC-10-15 had more powerful engines for hot and high airports. The DC-10-30 and –40 models (with a third main landing gear leg to support higher weights) each had intercontinental ranges of up to 5,200 nmi (9,600 km; 6,000 mi). The KC-10 Extender (based on the DC-10-30) is a tanker aircraft that was primarily operated by the United States Air Force.

Space Shuttle Columbia (OV-102) was a Space Shuttle orbiter manufactured by Rockwell International and operated by NASA. Named after the first American ship to circumnavigate the globe, and the female personification of the United States, Columbia was the first of five Space Shuttle orbiters to fly in space, debuting the Space Shuttle launch vehicle on its maiden flight on April 12, 1981 and becoming the first spacecraft to be re-used after its first flight when it launched on STS-2 on November 12, 1981. As only the second full-scale orbiter to be manufactured after the Approach and Landing Test vehicle Enterprise, Columbia retained unique external and internal features compared with later orbiters, such as test instrumentation and distinctive black chines. In addition to a heavier aft fuselage and the retention of an internal airlock throughout its lifetime, these made Columbia the heaviest of the five spacefaring orbiters: around 1,000 kilograms (2,200 pounds) heavier than Challenger and 3,600 kilograms (7,900 pounds) heavier than Endeavour when originally constructed. Columbia also carried ejection seats based on those from the SR-71 during its first six flights until 1983, and from 1986 onwards carried an imaging pod on its vertical stabilizer.

During its 22 years of operation, Columbia was flown on 28 missions in the Space Shuttle program, spending over 300 days in space and completing over 4,000 orbits around Earth. NASA's flagship orbiter, Columbia often flew flights dedicated to scientific research in orbit following the loss of Challenger in 1986. Columbia was used for eleven of the fifteen flights of Spacelab laboratories, all four United States Microgravity Payload missions, and the only flight of Spacehab's Research Double Module. Columbia flew many of the longest duration space shuttle missions, all dedicated to scientific research. The only space shuttle that could rival Columbia's long missions was Endeavour, which flew the STS-67 mission that lasted for nearly 17 days. In 1992, NASA modified Columbia to be able to fly some of the longest missions in the Shuttle Program history using the Extended Duration Orbiter pallet. The orbiter used the pallet in thirteen of the pallet's fourteen flights, which aided lengthy stays in orbit for scientific and technological research missions. The longest duration flight of the Shuttle Program, STS-80, was flown with Columbia in 1996, at over 17 days in orbit. Columbia was also used to deploy the first ever satellites into orbit by the Shuttle on STS-5, retrieve the Long Duration Exposure Facility and deploy the Chandra observatory, which was the heaviest payload ever carried by the Space Shuttle. Columbia also carried into space the first female commander of an American spaceflight mission, the first ESA astronaut, the first female astronaut of Indian origin, and the first Israeli astronaut.

A folding wing is a wing configuration design feature of aircraft to save space and is typical of carrier-based aircraft that operate from the limited deck space of aircraft carriers. The folding allows the aircraft to occupy less space in a confined hangar because the folded wing normally rises over the fuselage decreasing the floor area of the aircraft. Vertical clearance is also limited in aircraft carrier hangar decks. In order to accommodate for this, some aircraft such as the Supermarine Seafire and Fairey Gannet, have additional hinges to fold the wingtips downward, while others such as the A-5 Vigilante and S-3 Viking have folding tails. The F-14 Tomcat's variable-sweep wings can be "overswept" to occupy less space.

A T-tail is an empennage configuration in which the tailplane of an aircraft is mounted to the top of the fin. The arrangement looks like the capital letter T, hence the name. The T-tail differs from the standard configuration in which the tailplane is mounted to the fuselage at the base of the fin.

A twin tail is a type of vertical stabilizer arrangement found on the empennage of some aircraft. Two vertical stabilizers—often smaller on their own than a single conventional tail would be—are mounted at the outside of the aircraft's horizontal stabilizer. This arrangement is also known as an H-tail, as it resembles a capital "H" when viewed from the rear. The twin tail was used on a wide variety of World War II multi-engine designs that saw mass production, especially on the American B-24 Liberator and B-25 Mitchell bombers, the British Avro Lancaster and Handley Page Halifax heavy bombers, and the Soviet Union's Petlyakov Pe-2 attack bomber.

It can be easily confused for the similarly named twin-boom (or "double tail") arrangement, which has two separate tail-booms from the same fuselage rather than a single tail with twin stabilizers (a singular "twin tail" vs. two identical tails).

In aeronautics, the chord is an imaginary straight line segment joining the leading edge and trailing edge of an aerofoil cross section parallel to the direction of the airflow. The chord length is the distance between the trailing edge and the leading edge. The point on the leading edge used to define the main chord may be the surface point of minimum radius. For a turbine aerofoil, the chord may be defined by the line between points where the front and rear of a 2-dimensional blade section would touch a flat surface when laid convex-side up.

The wing, horizontal stabilizer, vertical stabilizer and propeller/rotor blades of an aircraft are all based on aerofoil sections, and the term chord or chord length is also used to describe their width. The chord of a wing, stabilizer and propeller is determined by measuring the distance between leading and trailing edges in the direction of the airflow. (If a wing has a rectangular planform, rather than tapered or swept, then the chord is simply the width of the wing measured in the direction of airflow.) The term chord is also applied to the width of wing flaps, ailerons and rudder on an aircraft.

A tailplane, also known as a horizontal stabiliser, is a small lifting surface located on the tail (empennage) behind the main lifting surfaces of a fixed-wing aircraft. Gyroplanes and some helicopters also feature horizontal stabilisers as part of their tail assembly. Not all fixed-wing aircraft have tailplanes.Canards, tailless and flying wing aircraft have no separate tailplane, while in V-tail aircraft the vertical stabiliser, rudder, and the tail-plane and elevator are combined to form two diagonal surfaces in a V layout.

The function of the tailplane is to provide stability and control. In particular, the tailplane helps adjust for changes in position of the centre of pressure or centre of gravity caused by changes in speed and attitude, fuel consumption, or dropping cargo or payload.