Inspired by the FQ thread about how do planes really fly. I was just a little kid when The Flying Nun was on TV. I don’t remember much about it or if they ever gave a reasonable explanation of how she was able to fly. I do seem to recall a scene where she explains to her boyfriend (or whoever that guy was) about if lift + thrust is greater than load + drag then you can fly. But I don’t ever remember her getting much forward momentum. It just seemed like a strong gust of wind could pick her up while she was just standing there. Did she have hollow bones like a chicken? Why didn’t she have to jump off a cliff (or run on a treadmill) to get airborne?
I’ve not seen any of the show in a long time but, IIRC, that’s it in a nutshell. She wears a unique cornette which provides sufficient lift when the wind is strong enough.
A wizard did it.
Anyone can fly once… it’s the missing the ground part that’s hard. 
I read the Wikipedia article just last week: they said it was a combination of high winds and her light body weight.
As I recall, she was petite and her nun hat was aerodynamic
Yeah. The hat flew more or less as a kite. She just held onto her hat and away she went. Weeee!
Of course kites only work when they’re attached to a fixed tether so the wind flows past them, not just carries them along like a balloon. Anyone who’s ever flown a kite & had the string break knows that from that point the kite goes only downwind and downward until it hits the ground. Or if your name is Charlie, lands high in a tree.
The show handwaved all that relying on audience willing suspension of disbelief to make it work.
Damn. I never knew that. Cool fact.
Sr Bertrille weighed just 98 pounds, which was low enough to get her airborne. She steered and made soft landings by tilting her head, allowing air to spill out from under her “wings.”
Today I learned a new word. So one of those nun hats with the big wings is a cornette. Did she have to hold onto it to fly or could she fly with her arms out? Seems like the cornette would have to have a very strong strap to support that body weight, and she’d be in constant danger of hanging herself by the neck until she was dead.
I recall her flying with her arms out. IIRC, her habit holds the hat on her head.
ETA: maybe it was just divine intervention?
Lotta pictures of her flying, and especially taking off or landing has her with one hand clamped on top of her head / hat and the other outstretched to balance or steer. As if one could hold themselves under a lifting hat with a hand.
Ref the pic above, obviously not every scene has her holding her hat. But some did.
More like trick photography. Did they have green screens back in the '60s? 
They did; the technology was invented in the 1930s.
Every time my brother watched a rerun episode he would go into song when she went airborne.
Usually Angel flying to close to the ground or Fly me to the moon in a Ralph Kramden voice.
Yeah, he was a joker.
She apparently had a phenomenally strong neck (the gallows holds no fear for her!)
I always assumed it was demons.
The worst part of the Flying Nun was…that it killed a season 2 of Gidget. That show is still good and clever. TFN…not so much.
The retro channels also carry Fields’ The Girl With Something Extra, which is a lot creepier than I remember.
Tootles!
Lucky she wasn’t Mr. Terrific, who had to flap his arms to stay aloft.
She apparently ran really fast on a treadmill.