VOLPLANE: 1: to glide in or as if in an airplane 2a: of an airplane: to descend gradually in controlled flight b: to fly in a glider
Vol plane (meaning "gliding flight") was a phrase first used by 19th-century French ornithologoists to describe downward flight by birds; it contrasted with vol a voile ("soaring flight"). Around the time Orville and Wilbur Wright were promoting their latest "areoplane" in France, the noun and verb "volplane" soared to popularity in America as terms relating to the daring dives by aviators. (Fly magazine reported in 1910, "The French flyers are noters for their thrilling spirals and vol planes from the sky.") The avian-to-aviator generalization was fitting, since the Wright brothers had studied the flight of birds in designing their planes.
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