With over 49,575 planes landing in Lanzarote each year and a vast majority of them coming from the north, have you ever wondered why they do not bumb into each other? After seeing so many planes taking off one after the other and taking the same route back to the UK. The sky is full of motoways and the lanes are distiquished by altitude, which means that planes flying down to lanzarote fly at higher altitudes and planes travelling north fly at lower altidues. Altitude is also monitored by air traffic controllers to ensure that the planes don’t pass too closely to each other while in flight.
The pilot controls the altitude of the plane by using the yoke, the airplane’s equivalent of a steering wheel. The yoke controls the elevators, two horizontal wing-like pieces that are on the tail of the plane. If the pilot wants to decrease the altitude, he pushes the yoke forward and points the nose of the plane down, which causes the elevators to point down. To climb, the pilot pulls back on the yoke to bring the nose of the plane and the elevators up. If the pilot wants to hold a steady altitude, the yoke is held in a neutral position, causing the elevators to point straight back.