Wing Loading Calculator
Calculate wing loading from aircraft weight and wing area, with optional aircraft presets. Useful for comparing takeoff and handling.
Wing Loading Calculator
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What the wing loading calculator does
Wing loading is the weight an aircraft carries on each unit of wing area, and it shapes much of how the aircraft flies. This calculator works it out from the weight and the wing area, with presets for a range of real aircraft, from the Airbus A380 to fighter jets, so you can compare them. It also gives the wing cube loading, a related figure used to compare aircraft of different sizes.
Below is what wing loading means, the equations behind it, how high and low values change an aircraft's behaviour, and a worked example.
How to use it
- Pick an aircraft preset, which fills in its wing area and weight, or choose Custom to enter your own.
- Enter the wing area and weight if you are using custom values.
- Press Calculate for the wing loading and wing cube loading, or Reset to clear it.
What wing loading means
Wing loading is simply the aircraft's weight divided by its wing area, so it tells you how hard each square metre of wing is working to hold the aircraft up. A wing has to generate enough lift to carry the whole weight, and the more weight piled onto a given area of wing, the harder that wing has to work, which it does by flying faster or at a higher angle.
This single number turns out to influence a great deal: how fast an aircraft must go to stay airborne, how short a runway it needs, how sharply it can turn, and how it rides through rough air. It is one of the first numbers an aircraft designer settles on, because so much of the aircraft's character follows from it.
The equations it uses
Wing loading is the weight W divided by the wing area S:
wing loading = W ÷ S
The calculator also gives the wing cube loading, which divides the weight by the wing area raised to the power of 1.5:
wing cube loading = W ÷ S1.5
The first is the everyday measure of how loaded a wing is. The second is built so that aircraft of different sizes but similar design come out with similar values, which makes it useful for comparing across scales.
High and low wing loading
A high wing loading means a lot of weight on a small wing, and it comes with a clear set of traits. The aircraft must fly fast to make enough lift, so its stalling, takeoff, and landing speeds are all high, and it is less nimble in a turn. But there is a real upside: a small wing is less disturbed by gusts, so a heavily loaded aircraft rides smoothly through turbulence. Airliners and fast jets sit here, trading low-speed handling for speed and a steady ride.
A low wing loading means a large wing for the weight, and the opposite traits. The aircraft can fly slowly, takes off and lands in a short distance, and turns tightly, but it gets bounced around by gusts and thermals because that big wing catches every disturbance. Gliders, light sport aircraft, and short-takeoff designs live here, trading the smooth ride for low speed and agility. The choice of wing loading is really a choice about what kind of flying the aircraft is for.
Wing cube loading
Plain wing loading has a quirk when you compare aircraft of very different sizes: as a design is scaled up, its weight grows faster than its wing area, so a larger aircraft naturally shows a higher wing loading even if it is essentially the same design. This makes raw wing loading awkward for comparing, say, a model aircraft with its full-size counterpart.
Wing cube loading is built to remove that effect. By dividing the weight by the wing area raised to the power of 1.5, it cancels the way loading drifts with size, so geometrically similar aircraft of any scale land on the same value. This is why it is popular among model-aircraft designers, who use it to judge whether a model will fly like its full-size inspiration rather than being misled by the size difference.
Units and precision
The calculator takes the wing area in square metres and the weight in kilograms, giving wing loading in kilograms per square metre, the usual aviation convention even though it is strictly a mass per area. The aircraft presets carry real published figures, so you can compare a wide-body airliner against a fighter directly. Results are shown to two decimal places, finer than the round figures used for comparison usually need.
A worked example
Take the F-16 preset, with a weight of about 19,187 kg and a wing area of 28 m².
Its wing loading is 19,187 ÷ 28 ≈ 685 kg/m². Strikingly, the Airbus A380 preset, at 575,000 kg over 845 m², works out to about 680 kg/m², almost the same, despite being a vastly larger aircraft. That is the lesson of wing loading: it is about the balance of weight to wing, not the absolute size, so a fighter and a superjumbo can load their wings to nearly the same degree.
Questions people ask
What is wing loading?
It is an aircraft's weight divided by its wing area, a measure of how much load each unit of wing carries. It strongly influences stall speed, takeoff distance, agility, and ride in turbulence.
What does high wing loading mean for an aircraft?
Higher stall, takeoff, and landing speeds and less agility, but a smoother ride through gusts. Airliners and fast jets have high wing loading; gliders and light aircraft have low.
How does wing loading affect stall speed?
A higher wing loading raises the stall speed, since a more heavily loaded wing must fly faster to make enough lift. A large wing for the weight lets an aircraft fly more slowly.
What is wing cube loading?
It is the weight divided by the wing area to the power of 1.5. It removes the way loading drifts with size, so aircraft of different scales but similar design can be compared fairly.
References
A quick note on where this comes from. Wing loading as weight over wing area, and its effect on stall speed, takeoff, and handling, are standard aerodynamics, set out in the Wikipedia article on wing loading and in aircraft design references. The SI units follow the US National Institute of Standards and Technology.
- Wikipedia, Wing loading. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wing_loading
- ScienceDirect Topics, Wing Loading (W/S), aircraft design overview. https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/engineering/wing-loading-w-s
- National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), Special Publication 811, Guide for the Use of the International System of Units (SI). https://www.nist.gov/pml/special-publication-811
Bibek Lal Karna is a PhD student and graduate teaching assistant at the University of Mississippi, with deep interests in theoretical and gravitational physics. He is also the founder of NRCC and is strongly engaged in scientific teaching and communication. At Eon Tools, he reviews physics tools.