I was watching Air Force One (w/ the pres and co on their way to foreign countries and Pearl Harbor, USA) on Fox News earlier and was dumbstruck all over again RE how the heck airplanes can fly.. how they can even get off the ground. I was totally distracted from the news commentary b/c of this visual

abysmally unfathomable to me...

I know there is thrust and all that but I still have not grasped this.. and my intellect is rather physics-impaired so maybe I will never get it

but if someone could explain this in a brief kind of way?

This is how I understand it GS. There is a lot more to it than this, but not being an aeronautical engineer the simple explanation is all I need. It's mainly because of the shape of the wings. The top of the wing is curved, which means that air travelling across the top of the wing has further to travel than air travelling across the bottom surface of the wing. Because it has further to travel in the same time, the air flowing over the top of the wing travels faster than the air under the wing. The difference in speed of air flow also creates a pressure difference. The pressure above the wing is lower than the pressure below the wing. The 'pressure gradient' from higher (under the wing) to lower (above the wing) in turn results in a force which acts in the same direction as the press gradient i.e. upwards. This force is called 'lift'. At a certain speed, the lift force is sufficient to overcome gravity, and the plane takes off.
I hope that this somewhat garbled explanation helps a bit.

This is how I understand it GS. There is a lot more to it than this, but not being an aeronautical engineer the simple explanation is all I need. It's mainly because of the shape of the wings. The top of the wing is curved, which means that air travelling across the top of the wing has further to travel than air travelling across the bottom surface of the wing. Because it has further to travel in the same time, the air flowing over the top of the wing travels faster than the air under the wing. The difference in speed of air flow also creates a pressure difference. The pressure above the wing is lower than the pressure below the wing. The 'pressure gradient' from higher (under the wing) to lower (above the wing) in turn results in a force which acts in the same direction as the press gradient i.e. upwards. This force is called 'lift'. At a certain speed, the lift force is sufficient to overcome gravity, and the plane takes off.
I hope that this somewhat garbled explanation helps a bit.

thank you. That was helpful
but what about how it gets off the ground at such a slow speed in the 1st place?