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 is a rare set of insectoid wings that are used 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 the 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 are gray in color by default, but in Java edition they adopt the design of any cape the player is wearing. The elytra wings always have the same texture on the player's back, even if 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 landing at a shallow angle or a low enough speed. The critical angle is about 50&deg; with the collision surface, and the calculation for damage seems to be the difference between the glide's maximum potential altitude and the elevation of the surface struck.

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 or read articles on the Official Minecraft Wiki.

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, and vice versa&mdash;gliding at the flight's highest altitude results in the lowest speed. Even though the player can gain intense speeds by losing altitude, this ceiling never increases without powered flight, and it in fact slowly decreases over time as well as when the player makes turns.

The highest potential altitude drops at a minimum rate of 1.5 m/sec, and sharp turns somewhat equalize it with the current altitude; so taking a hair-pin turn while below the altitude ceiling won't bring it lower than the player, and while the player's already cruising as high as they can a hair-pin turn would have no effect. Quicker changes 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 right over it they apply as fast a turn as possible, then they make readjustments as necessary.

The lowest consistent speed is about 7.2 m/sec. Any time the player reaches zero speed, their inevitable drop in altitude quickly accelerates them back up to this minimum.

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. Acceleration time is greatly cut back by how high the player is aimed&mdash;Firing rockets while aimed at the horizon creates the greatest gain in altitude of up to ~50 meters (confirm?), and doing so while aimed directly upwards only allows for ~20 meters gain.

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 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?"