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

Elytra are an item that allows the player to glide, and fly under certain conditions. They are gray in color unless the player is wearing a cape, in which case the elytra will adopt the cape's design.

Natural generation
Elytra are found in end cities. One pair of elytra is found within an item frame in the end ship.

Repairing
Elytra may also be repaired on an anvil by adding leather.

Gliding
Elytra are equipped in the chestplate slot. They can either be placed directly in the slot, or be equipped using a dispenser or by right clicking when in hotbar.

To initiate gliding, the player must jump in midair. From there, direction is controlled by looking left or right, and the gliding speed and rate of descent is controlled by looking up or down. Looking upwards while gliding temporarily increases the player's altitude, however doing this for too long stalls the player, causing it to descend at a faster rate (indicated by the player moving their limbs).

Elytra allow the player to travel 10 blocks horizontally for each block fallen when flying at a constant 0° pitch, not including the initial fall, resulting in a best constant glide angle of about 5.7°. The maximum flight time is obtained with a pitch of about 14° up. The maximum terminal horizontal velocity is approximately 67.5 m/s and is obtained with a pitch of about 52° down.

Durability decreases by one point each second when gliding. Elytra have 431 durability, resulting in 7 minutes and 11 seconds of gliding time. It is possible to apply the Unbreaking enchantment using an anvil and an enchanted book, which affects the elytra in the same way that enchantment affects tools, increasing glide time to about four seconds of use per point of durability for Unbreaking III elytra. Low server tick will also increase this if the chunks are being created too fast for the computer to keep up.

The player will not take fall damage while gliding unless hitting the ground or a wall at an excessive velocity, which can be caused by nose-diving or stalling. Fall damage will then be a result of the height fallen during the nose-dive or stall.

A player gliding with elytra has a shorter hitbox than usual: 0.6 blocks in height rather than 1.8 blocks.

Speed boost
When you hold a firework rocket in your hand and are gliding with elytra, the firework rocket will boost the gliding speed, allowing the player to fly. If the rocket is equipped with a firework star of any kind, damage will be dealt to the player. The duration or strength of the speed boost depends on the flight duration of the firework rocket.

The player can also shoot themselves with a Punch enchanted bow in midair, however this causes a lot of damage and can be difficult to properly time.

Repair
When durability reaches 1, elytra will no longer work until they are repaired, and cannot lose more durability. These “broken” elytra have a different, tattered item texture, though they do not appear differently on the player. They may be repaired either by crafting two together, by applying the Mending enchantment to the elytra, or by combining the elytra with leather in an anvil. Each piece of leather will repair the elytra by 108 durability, therefore requiring 4 leather to fully repair.

Enchantments
Elytra can receive the following enchantments in survival, but only through an anvil:


 * Unbreaking
 * Mending
 * Curse of Vanishing
 * Curse of Binding

Trivia

 * In reality, elytra are the tough forewings of beetles and earwigs that cover the wings they actually use for flight. Elytra are not actually used for flight in real life.
 * It is possible to glide while on a ladder. You can do this by pressing followed by . This will cause you to fall, with a speed decided by your vertical rotation. This means that you can descend very fast on a ladder, but if your speed is too fast when hitting the ground, you can take fatal fall damage. Using a firework rocket can also speed up your descent.
 * It is possible to scale 1.5 vertical blocks while wearing elytra. If the player sprints at the wall and rapidly presses jump, the player activates the elytra, and swoops up to land on top of the wall, even though the player cannot normally jump it.
 * With a proper heading (~-5 in the menu), a player can scale a wall that is 3.125 blocks.
 * If you glide into deep water with elytra equipped, the animation will not stop, making it look as if there's better swimming animations. Once you touch ground, though, the animation will stop.
 * Additionally, fireworks can be used underwater but it will give lesser boost duration due to the water's effect, this is useful for underwater swimming.
 * 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 worshippers" 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.