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Personally, I have a problem with teachers using things they don't understand in order to make a real world application possible. In order to assume that the constant wind has the same effect traveling both ways you have to assume that wind coming from the front has the same effect as wind coming from behind. The only way that could happen is if the plane was perfectly symmectical.
Comparing it to a car, cars are designed to minimize drag from the front of the vehicle. The engineers are not concerned with how a tailwind effects the vehicle because it does not reduce efficiency. If you put a car in a wind tunnel you'd get completely different flow patterns when you change the wind direction. The drag coefficients are totally different.
I just hate it when people misuse concepts like this. To me, its like saying the ice cools the water rather than being more correct by saying that the warm water melts the ice.
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