maybe that's why he's a "former" 737 pilot...

the piston engine blades on propellers do not "turn the other direction",
but they do change pitch enough to create reverse thrust..

on a jet engine, it's a matter of thrust attenuators changing the flow of
the air around the engine or exhaust direction

BT

"Ramapriya" wrote in message
om...
Hi again,

I have for a colleague a 30-yr old former Air Canada 737 pilot who
doesn't take too kindly to questions of my kind When I asked him
recently about how forward thrust happens, he said that the engine
blades simply turn the other direction. With nothing to back up my
hunch, I still feel something amiss and implausible in what he said,
but if true, I must confess it represents fantastic braking within the
engine to first get the blades to a stop spinning, and next spin the
other way!

Could someone please confirm or deny what my colleague told me? That
pilot, by the way, says he has not heard of 'chandelles' or 'phugoids'
or even 'angle of attack'. Leaves me thinking that either Denker's
book contains non-standard terminology (unlikely) or Canadians use a
different set of terms (likely). OR he's feigning to keep me away (

Ramapriya