Why can't Garchomp learn fly?

“It flies at speeds equal to a jet fighter plane. It never allows its prey to escape.“Do I need to say anything else?

(I do not want to see “That’s the way Game Freak wanted it”)

Pleaselog inorregisterto add a comment.

Well, there is no absolute answer (except for the taboo “because GameFreak wanted it that way”) but here is my theory.

Garchomp’s deisgn looks aerodynamic, but it has no way of flying high into the air, which is required to use Fly. I think that the pokedex entries simply means it can move very fast, maybe even just off the ground, but it can’t get the lift required for true flight.

Also, notice that it does get Aerial Ace (a lot of non-Flying Pokemon do, though). Aerial Ace is different as (I imagine) it can be performed by a Pokemon that can jump well.

It’s likely because Garchomp has that ground typing. Let’s look at our ground types that can learn fly.

Now let’s look at the features.

Golurk is a machine type Pokemon. It’s literally called the “Automaton” Pokemon. In the SM anime, Hapu flies around on her golurk. This is likely why it can fly.

Vibrava and Flygon are fairly self-explanatory, since they both literally have wings.

Arceus-ground is literally the god of Pokemon :P

Landorus and Therian Landorus both have that flying type on them, so of course they can fly.

The only thing that gets me, is Gliscor. It can’t learn fly. This might just be because of the fact that its name is GLISCOR. Glide Scorpion. It glides, not flies.

Garchomp seems like it’d glide too. The wings are probably not strong enough to allow it to fly easily. In SM Ultra legends though, it flies easily with ash on it’s back, so that confuses me a lot.

Garchomp must be able to fly for a short period of time if it tries, but likely not use fly, since that takes the Pokemon extremely high up. What do you guys think?