HOW JET ENGINE WORKS

Jet engines work fundamentally by drawing in air, lots of air, mixing it with fuel and expelling the
resulting gases out the back at great speed. That moves the engine forward by reaction, as well as
the airplane attached to it.

But that’s not quite how today’s jet engines work. In fact, most of the thrust generated by a modern
jet engine comes simply by moving an incredible volume of air, all at once, very quickly. A full 90% of
the air that enters the engines passes right through without being mixed with fuel and ignited. The
fan blades at the front are a slave to the core of the engine — and that core makes those fans do all
the heavy lifting.

At the dawn of the jet engine, airplanes used a type of jet engine that’s no longer made for
commercial uses: a turbojet, in which all of the air sucked into the engine passes through its core.
These days, jets instead use turbofans, which push almost all of the air they ingest around the
engine core. They’re quieter and far more efficient than turbojets.

The biggest jetliners in service today have extremely high-bypass engines, where there is a high ratio
between the air accelerated through the engine — bypassing the core — and the air going into the
core of the engine itself. The huge diameter of those engines, such as those on Boeing 777s, is due
to the need to have a giant fan at the front.