Flight Training - April 2014 - 48

ADVANCED PILOT»

50,000

Was this training useful? Absolutely. Most eye-opening was how
much of a dog a jet can be once
40,000
it gets behind the power curve.
In normal operations, for thousands of hours we never get to see
this regime, so it was extremely
30,000
valuable to do it in the simulator.
High-speed
buffet
Low-speed
The ordinarily all-powerful jet is
FT
boundary
buffet
reduced to the performance level of
boundary
a Piper Apache on one engine on a
20,000
hot day. Throw in the all-or-nothing aerodynamics of a swept wing
and it's potentially worse.
Of course, the first step to avoid
10,000
all of this is preventing a stall in
the first place. Pardon the Mondaymorning quarterbacking, but there
0
was one thing the Air France pilots
200
300
400
500
600
seemingly failed to do. Most pilots
who fly one airplane a lot (owners
TAS
and airline pilots, for example) get
AS ALTITUDE RISES, the jet's margin between the high- and low-speed redlines is reduced to a very narrow
band of usable airspeed. In order to widen the margin, the airplane has to burn off fuel to become lighter or
to know which power settings prodescend to a lower altitude.
vide a certain speed at nearly any
warned of an impending stall. At
3,500 feet, the airplane is controlgiven altitude. For example, setting
that point, the autopilot kicks off
lable, maintaining altitude and
1,900 rpm keeps a Cessna 172 comand the drill is to firewall the power slowly regaining speed.
ing down the glideslope nicely at
and try to recover. I observed as my
Following some instruction on
about 75 knots with some flaps.
partner flew the recovery.
how best to recover, it was my
With each new airplane you check
You first notice that nothing
turn. The instructor recommended out in, it's best to note what pitch
happens quickly at this altitude.
following the stall recovery cue
and power settings work in various
The engines take seemingly forever (feathers) that appear on the
conditions. It actually makes flying
to spool back up; meanwhile, the
attitude indicator during the
much easier.
airplane feels as if it's balancing on maneuver, except to always keep
The Air France Airbus zooma basketball as the wing tries to get the airplane symbol below the
climbed from FL350 to FL380 with
a bite of air to work with. When the feathers. Once it touches them or
a substantial 12-degree nose-up
wing stalls, the simulator bucks in
goes above, the stick pusher fires
pitch that resulted in a 1.6-G load.
protest. All the while, you're falling and you're bucking and losing more Every jet pilot should know that
at 2,000 feet per minute or more.
altitude. Even with a gentle touch,
such performance is impossible to
Having already lost nearly 1,500 the gyrations can be wild. Granted, attain at that altitude and weight
feet, the engines have reached
lots of this monkey-motion can be
unless it was caused by weather
max power, but the airplane is so
attributed to the simulator's pitch
(which may have been what the
deeply behind the power curve
sensitivity, but it's still a regime that pilot was thinking). Once the pitot
that it makes little difference.
you clearly do not want to explore
tubes froze up, the pilots' basic
The stick shaker was on about 25
in the real airplane.
knowledge of attitude and power
percent of the time as my co-pilot
I finally got the airplane recovsettings could have avoided the
gingerly tried to get back to norered with a loss of 2,700 feet, and
abrupt pitch-up that led to the
mal flying conditions. Even a slight that was knowing what was going
fatal stall.
pull on the yoke resulted in that
to happen and with instruction on
lower redline (stall) coming up to
how best to recover. In a surprise
Pete Bedell is a pilot for a major airline and
or through our current airspeed,
situation, such as what occurred to co-owner of a Cessna 172 and Beechcraft
bringing on the buffet and shaker
the Air France pilots, it's easy to see Baron. He holds type ratings in the BAe
again. Finally, with a loss of about
how this could turn into a disaster.
Jetstream 41, Canadair RJ, and Boeing 737.
Coffin corner

48 /

FLIGHTTRAINING.AOPA.ORG

http://FLIGHTTRAINING.AOPA.ORG

Flight Training - April 2014

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Flight Training - April 2014