aeroplane vs aircraft Sorry to bring this up after all the debate and resulting conclusions but the WP definition of aircraft is at odds with standard world wide ICAO terminology From Title 14 FARs Section 1 Aircraft means a device that is used or intended to be used for flight in the air includes all flying machines with or without wings Thus balloons flying pigs and F 15s are all aircraft Airplane means an engine driven fixed wing aircraft heavier than air that is supported in flight by the dynamic reaction of the air against its wings refers to aircraft with wings only Thus an F 15 is an airplane but a balloon is not an airplane Airplane and aeroplane are mostly interchangeable The FAA definitions are identical to the European JAR definitions and the Canadian CARs definitions because all personnel licencing is based on the basic ICAO standard I notice this confusion happens throughout WP on many topics because of the large number of inexperienced editors Perhaps it s just the enthusiastic revisionist ignorance of youth Regardless the incorrect use of terms in technical articles is grating and it degrades the usefulness of Wikipedia