Elytra

"Elytra! Soar through The End on your freshly-minted insectoid glider, or, if you’d rather practice first, why not put your aerobatic skills to the test by generating a world with the new Amplified Terrain option?"

- Marsh Davies

The elytra are a rare set of insectoid wings that allow the player to fly through the air.

Natural generation
The elytra can only be found in the ships docked at end cities. A pair is held in an item frame in every ship's hold, guarded by a shulker, along with the ship’s two loot chests.

Usage
Elytra are equipped in the chestplate slot, either by placing the item directly in the slot, by pressing while held in hand, or by firing a point-blank dispenser at a target. The wings of the elytra are gray in color by default, but in Java edition they adopt the design of any cape the player is wearing. They maintain their in-world texture design even when they're broken or enchanted.

Flying
To fly, the player must press the key while falling, whereupon the elytra spread apart like insect wings and the player enters a glide. The elytra diver can aim their view around to turn or adjust their pitch. Losing altitude increases speed, and gaining altitude decreases speed. Additionally, speed is quickly lost from sharp changes in direction (See "Speed & Altitude" below for more on this).

Directly hitting any surface while gliding too fast causes damage proportional to flight speed (although this may be calculated from another factor). The player does not take fall damage from colliding at a shallow angle or a low enough speed. The critical, damaging angle is about 50&deg; with the collision surface, and the calculation for damage seems to be as if the player had fallen from their maximum potential glide height to the height of the struck surface.

A safe and simple cruise with the highest travel distance can be achieved by aiming directly at the horizon while at the glide's altitude limit. The player's speed is slow enough to allow them time to do other things during a long flight, like sort out their inventory.

In Creative mode, the player can alternatively hold the key to fly.

Speed & altitude
The mechanics do not allow a player to use the speed gained from gliding downward to regain a previous altitude. It may help to imagine a "flight ceiling," or a highest potential altitude, that the player can never fly above and which begins at the start of the glide. Speed increases as distance from it increases. Even though the player can gain intense speeds by losing altitude, this ceiling never increases without powered flight, and it in fact always decreases at a rate proportional to the diver's speed. It can also be brought down by making turns.

The elytra have a minimum speed of about 7.2 m/s, (obtained by gliding at the altitude cap with a strong upwards pitch of 30&deg;.) If the diver drops to 0 speed, they quickly get accelerated back up to at least this minimum. The diver can increase speed by choosing to descend faster, but afterwards they won't regain nearly as much altitude as they'd like. In the real world, drag increases with speed, and drag in turn slows the aircraft; Minecraft mimics this. To glide from cliff to cliff, a player's best bet is to aim slightly above the horizon.

Sharp turns are a fast way to lose speed. Quicker turns cause greater losses, while gentle movements have small effects. Making a hair-pin turn can actually be used for making high-speed landings safe as well as for precise landings on small targets like rooftops. The player aims to glide just above the target, then as they're right over it they immediately reverse directions, then they make readjustments as necessary.

The lowest rate of altitude loss is about 1.5 m/sec, obtained by gliding at the altitude cap with a slight upwards pitch (12&deg; or 15&deg;).

To get the best possible glide ratio (and thus the furthest distance out of their altitude), the diver pilot should aim directly at the horizon. This ratio is about 9.47 to 1.

Speed is affected by Slow Falling.

Stalling
Trying for too high a pitch reduces the player's lift. At a pitch of 30&deg; above the horizon, the player has the lowest possible air speed of 7.2 m/sec. Above that, the player might be considered to be in a stall. Increasing pitch gets closer to a free-fall, and stalled flight at 60&deg; is enough to cause fall damage. Stalling at 90&deg; is a true free-fall.

Recovering from a stall is done by readjusting to any safe pitch as quick as the player likes. This can be just changing to look at the horizon.

Powered flight
Firework rockets can be used for propulsion during flight by placing it in hand and pressing. Using a firework rocket while gliding quickly maximizes the player's speed for a time similar to the rocket's flight duration.

If the rocket is equipped with a firework star of any kind, it explodes at the end of the flight, inflicting damage.

A trident enchanted with Riptide can be used for propulsion as well, but only in water, rain, or a thunderstorm.

Repair
Durability decreases by one point each second when gliding. A pair of elytra has 431 durability, allowing 7 minutes and 11 seconds of gliding time without enchantments. It is possible to apply the Unbreaking enchantment using an anvil and an enchanted book, which affects the elytra in the same way it does tools. Unbreaking III increases an elytra's flight time to about four seconds per durability point, a total of 28 minutes and 44 seconds.

When durability reaches 1, the elytra stop working until they are repaired, adopting a tattered texture in the inventory. The damage ends at durability 1, so they can never fully break. A pair may be repaired by either using the Mending enchantment, combining two pairs in a grindstone, or combining it in an anvil with phantom membranes. In an anvil, each piece of membrane repairs the elytra by 108 durability points, requiring 4 pieces to fully repair them.

Enchantments
The elytra can receive the following enchantments, but only through an anvil:

Note: Thorns also works as normal on the elytra wings, but can only be put on using commands in Java Edition, or with an anvil on Minecraft Console Edition.
 * Unbreaking
 * Mending
 * Curse of Vanishing
 * Curse of Binding

Trivia

 * In reality, elytra are not used for flight. They are the tough forewings of beetles and earwigs that cover the wings they actually use for flight.
 * A flying player has a shorter hitbox than usual: A 0.6 block cube centered on the player's feet.
 * It is possible to glide while on a ladder. The player can do this by pressing followed by . This will cause the player to fall, with a speed decided by their vertical rotation. This means that the player can descend very fast on a ladder, but if their speed is too fast when hitting the ground, they can take fatal fall damage. Using a firework rocket can also speed up the player's descent.
 * $$ If the player glides into deep water with elytra equipped, the animation will not stop, giving it the appearance of a swimming animation. Once the player touches ground, though, the animation will stop.
 * Additionally, firework rockets can be used with elytra underwater, but due to the properties of water, the boost duration will be shorter.
 * Elytra can be equipped onto mobs using commands, although for some it doesn't work. Most mobs will follow one of three different flight paths (which they cannot control) before landing, at which they will regain their AI.
 * Exceptions to this are squid and chickens, as the squid's AI will cause it to try and "swim" in midair, making it fall straight down because it conflicts with the elytra mechanics. Since chickens fall slowly, they will only move so far.
 * Endermen, tamed wolves and tamed cats which are not sitting will not teleport until they hit the ground.
 * 4J Studios created an elytra-centered tutorial map for console edition when elytra were first introduced to this platform, this map is themed as "ruins of an ancient civilization of Minecraft worshipers" and showcases the new amplified terrain generation. This map can be seen behind the scenes here.
 * On 28 March 2017, 4J Studios added an elytra themed Mini Games for console edition called "Glide"; it consists of Time Attack and Score Attack mode.
 * If you have both the elytra and the slow falling effect and then you press the jump button, you will slightly go upwards, a cheap but time-consuming alternative to fireworks and Riptide tridents.
 * On May 5, 2019, Mojang tweeted 'The End never yields enough adequate resources, sadly.' along with a sad emoji. The first letter of each word spells 'T E n y e a r s' (Ten Years). Attached was a picture of Steve and Alex wearing both a Chestplate and an Elytra. The next day, they tweeted, "Have you noticed something suspic10us here lately?"