All the previous answers are helpful, and Phil's, in my view, is especially practical.

Hello there! I presume your question comes from a little frustration about how English can be! The words in and on most of the time work as expected but sometimes, like many prepositions, they are non-sensical! So what can a student do....? 1 Please remember that ALL languages have some illogical meanings! 2 Try to remember these strange uses because they are so strange... maybe ask why and the story will stick in your head! So why do we say on a plane? Well as far as I know it's because the first planes were considered ships in the air, airships!, and you board a ship just like you board a plane at the airport (although not on a long board of wood as with a ship!), and are you on a ship or in a ship? We say on a ship, on a boat etc... so that's why we illogically say we are on a plane! Anyways, sorry for our crazy language, enjoy the flight!

There are general rules that you know, but you'll just have to memorize when to use. On a plane On a boat In a car On a bike There's really not too many more situations you need to remember.

If you could stand up and bump your head on the roof / ceiling, you are *in* a vehicle: car, truck If you cannot bump your head on the roof / ceiling, then you are *on* — for example: bus, plane, train, boat, bicycle, motorcycle.

2-1 Some people would say, do not try to find the rules, just speak in the way that natives speak. It's right, and in some sense this is the ultimate way to learn a foreign language. But a native has all the advantages to aquire their mother tongue: intensive and repeated speech and writing in everywhere, every time, and every scope, especially the high efficiency: what they meet is what they need. Foreign language learners have no such environment, so they're alway trying to find the 'rules' so as to use a 'rule' to deal with a class of language phenomena: natives aquire language through enormous individual uses and thereby aquire the complete grammar or the system of 'rules', even though they do not clearly know at all what the contents are. On the contrary, foreign language learners tend to learn a language by using as many 'rules' as possible. Although, theoretically, every linguistic phenomenon has its origion and reason; but it's over-complex so that it's almost impossible to completely classify all of them and put them under respective 'rules'. And maybe this is why all grammars are not complete. It seems that there are so many language usages that we do not yet have any means to explain. Further more, we do not even know a lot of language usages are 'phenomena' waiting for explanation.