Aerodynamic lift

When a curved airfoil, like the wing of a bird, or the wing of an airplane, moves through the at a positive angle of attack, then the moving air is deflected downwards. This downwards deflection, by Newton's third law, pushes the wing, and everything attached to it, upwards. Aerodynamic lift increases with the square of the velocity, fly twice as fast, get four times as much lift force upwards.

The aerodynamic drag that aerodynamic lift induces also increases with the square of the velocity, however, on an absolute scale, it is much smaller than the generated lift. This is one reason why airplanes (and birds) are so efficient and can fly so fast, they get their lift at a very low cost.

This is in contrast to helicopters or other pure rotor craft (like multicopters). Such vehicles do not have the benefit of 'nearly free' lift from the wing, but have to at all times generate their lift actively via their rotors, in addition to expending energy pushing themselves forward. Since the rotors also cause a lot of drag, copters can typically fly at only half the speed of comparably sized airplanes (including SkyCruiser and SkyProwler) and have less than half the range.