Bernoulli and lift: why the air over a wing really goes faster

Rono sits by the window, right over the wing. Air presses on everything around him, from every side. On a wing standing still, the push from above and the push from below are the same. They cancel out. This push of the air has a name: air pressure.

Now the air flows over the wing and bends around its top. Air only follows a curve when the pressure on the inside of the curve, next to the wing, is lower. Then the higher pressure outside pushes it around the bend. So, just above the wing, the pressure drops.

Under the wing, the tilted surface pushes against the air and slows it a little. There, the pressure gets a little higher.

Now the pushes don't cancel. The air below pushes up harder than the air above pushes down. The difference is the lift. It is the same lift as before: the push back from the air thrown down. Here we just look at it from another side.

Air is pushed from high pressure toward low pressure, a bit like water running downhill. So the air in front of the wing rushes into the low pressure above it, and speeds up. Air speeds up where the pressure drops, and slows down where it rises. This is Bernoulli's principle.

So Rono's textbook got one thing right: faster air goes with lower pressure. But the air does not hurry to meet anyone. The wing bends the air, the pressure above it drops, and the air speeds up into the low pressure.

All this needs air rushing past the wings, hundreds of kilometres an hour of it. The engines make that speed. Rono looks at the engine under the wing and goes pale. What happens if both engines stop?