Translational lift is improved rotor efficiency resulting from directional flight in a helicopter.
The efficiency of the hovering rotor system is greatly improved with each knot of airspeed gained by horizontal movement of the aircraft or wind speed.
[1]: 2–27 Above this speed, the rotor system completely outruns the recirculation of old vortices and begins to work in undisturbed air.
[2]: 2–22 This additional lift can enable an overloaded helicopter to climb even if it is too heavy to hover in ground effect.
[1]: 2–28 As speed increases and translational lift becomes more effective, the helicopter will tend to pitch up and roll to the right or left (depending on main rotor rotation direction), due to dissymmetry of lift, gyroscopic precession, and the transverse flow effect.