AOPA Turbine Pilot Magazine - March 2025 - 90

RUDDER & WRENCH
Push me, pull you /
Loops are a great way to show that the best remedy for a stall is to push on the stick, regardless of the attitude. Whether pointed
straight at the ground, or at the top of the loop and upside down, pulling on the stick worsens the stall condition.
" How do you recover from a stall? " is
a question I often pose to candidates and
" Add full power and push the nose down
to the horizon " is a typical reply. " OK, then
what is the corrective action if the stall
warner sounds but the nose is below the
horizon? " After a long pause and furrowed
brow, the candidate replies, " Add full power
and bring the nose to the horizon " while
using his hands to simulate pulling back on
the yoke.
I shudder when I imagine this is how
the pilot in the 2009 Colgan Air crash
might have responded to the same query.
During that landmark accident, the captain,
who was the pilot flying, was on an instrument
approach into Buffalo, New York, and
as the airframe picked up ice during the
descent, the angle of attack increased until
the stick-shaker warned of an impending
stall. He should have pushed on the yoke to
recover. Instead he pulled back, used ailerons
to counteract to dropping wing and
sent the airplane spinning to the ground
and thereby sealed the fate of 50 people
who perished in the accident.
Even flight instructor candidates struggle
to imagine that an airplane's wings can
be stalled with the nose below the horizon.
(That's especially surprising as these
candidates have earned a spin endorsement
during which the aircraft wings are
stalled, despite a view of the ground that
fills the entire windscreen.) Indeed, the
way that we practice and demonstrate
stalls on a practical exam often isn't how
the inadvertent ones happen. Hearing the
stall warning blare while the aircraft nose
90
AOPA PILOT / March 2025
is below the horizon can be confusing and
pilots find pulling back on the yoke a compelling,
albeit incorrect, way to stay away
from the ground.
Over the years, I've heard misunderstandings
about the connection between
stalls and the horizon on countless practical
exams. During a week that I spent at a
single flight school, I listened to the same
explanation from most of the candidates.
I asked one of the flight instructors why
their students uniformly provide the same
wrong, and dangerous, procedure and he
explained, " Well, it's in our standardization
manual. " Sure enough, he showed me
that the manual's stall recovery procedure
stated that the nose should be lowered to
the horizon.
I asked a flight school administrator
about removing " horizon " from the reference
and he shared his reticence to do
so. There had been multiple cases of students
landing in a nose-low attitude that
ended up with a prop strike and even
shearing off the nose wheel of their trainers.
They surmised that the students felt
they were about to stall and shoved the
nose forward aggressively. Of course, I
can't say for sure but after flying with
thousands of practical exam candidates,
I very much doubted their conjecture's
truth. Of all those, I have advised just
two that I believe approached too slowly
on final. The grand majority fly the final
approach segment with too much energy
(see " Flare is Not a Four-Letter Word " ,
June 2020 AOPA Pilot) and a pilotinduced
oscillation is the more likely
culprit. It took several conversations, but
they finally excised " horizon " from the
stall recovery procedure.
We're now ready to return to the loop
and discover its messages.
Pitch angle and angle of attack are
unrelated. In performing a loop, a pilot
sees every pitch attitude of which an airplane
is capable. But at no time during a
properly flown loop does the airplane ever
stall. The loop demonstrates that it often
doesn't matter where the horizon is.
No matter what attitude, the antidote
to a stall is pushing forward on the yoke.
Stalls can happen during a loop when the
pilot pulls too aggressively. During the
period between the nose pointing straight
up and inverted flight, for example, the
stall warner is sounding and releasing the
back-pressure will silence the horn. Not
doing so can result in a stall/spin from the
top of the loop. With sufficient altitude,
one could pretend that it was intentional.
Spinning from a loop is fun and you'll even
see it at airshows. Pulling too hard at any
point during the loop can lead to a stall but
the proper recovery procedure is the same.
(See above.)
Pilot candidates can usually recite the
saying that an airplane can stall in any attitude
and at any airspeed but it's clear that
few internalize that fact. Considering, and
better yet flying, a loop can send that lesson
home in a fun and memorable way.
Catherine Cavagnaro teaches aerobatics
at UOS and is the Gaston Swindell Bruton
Professor of Mathematics at Sewanee: The
University of the South.

AOPA Turbine Pilot Magazine - March 2025

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