Question

A plane takes off and flies at an angle of 11° with the ground. When it reaches an elevation of 500 ft, what is the distance flown along the diagonal?

Answer 1

It had flown 2620 ft along the diagonal.

Explanation:

When the plane is taking off it forms we can form a triangle with it's height, horizontal distance and diagonal distance, which can be seen in the attached drawing. We can use the sine relation on the right triangle to determine "x", as shown below:

sin(11°) = 500/x

x*sin(11) = 500

x = 500/[sin(11)] = 2620 ft

It had flown 2620 ft along the diagonal.