The "Plane on a Treadmill" Question

[9th Engineer]

My God I can't believe this problem generated 6 pages of posts.
THE PLANE TAKES OFF!!!!
Flint, you are saying we need to forget HOW a plane works and just assume that because of the word 'but' the plane cannot move forward, even though the question then goes on to say that all the treadmill is doing is matching its speed with the forward motion of the aircraft. Flint, you are correct if this was a car with wings, but because the speed of the ground has no effect on the speed of the AIR around the plane, it will take off normally.
Asking to forget everything about how the objects in question work and make an assumption based on a conjunction in one of the sentences is rediculous, there's no point to even making it a plane at that point then, we can't even assume the wings generate lift because the problem doesn't say that they do.