How Planes Generate Lift Planes generate lift using wings. The wings on an airplane are designed to use Bernoulli's principle. Bernoulli's principle states that when velocity of a fluid increases, the pressure or potential energy of that fluid decreases. Luckily for airplanes, air tends to act very similar to liquid which means that as the velocity of air increases, the pressure of that air also decreases. Knowing this, the airfoil was created. A wing is a large airfoil. The point of an airfoil  or wing is to make the air passing over top of the wing move faster than the air flowing underneath the wing. This is done by there being a greater distance for the air to travel on the top of the airfoil due to the camber of the airfoil.  The higher velocity of the air above the wing allows there to be less pressure above the wing than underneath the wing, which creates lift as pressure likes to move from high to low.                            Up Next: Four Forces of Flight