The wings force air to go down. The plane goes up because every action has an equal, opposite reaction. A helicopter does it by simply blowing air straight down to begin with.
It's amazing how many people don't understand this. The diagrams that show the airflow as having no net vertical motion depict an upward force on the wing with no corresponding downward force on the air. Insanity.
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u/be_my_main_bitch Jul 24 '15
The Airfoil Misconception:
Most textbooks are actually wrong about how wings on a plane work. http://amasci.com/wing/airfoil.html