Attitude Recovery

Contents:

  • Related Articles
  • Unusual Attitudes & Upset Recovery
  • Shaking up your inner ear
  • Unusual Attitude Recovery
  • CFI Brief: Unusual Attitude Recoveries
  • Recovery from Unusual Aircraft Attitudes

    • Related Articles

    A technical discussion of a pilot's best defense in an aircraft unusual attitude or upset condition by experts in upset prevention and recovery training. To complete the recovery, roll to wings level, if necessary, as the nose approaches the horizon. Recover to slightly nose-low attitude to reduce the potential for.

    If you are a copyright holder and see your material here, that means I think your work can help to that end. Still, if you would rather your materials not appear on this website, please "Contact Eddie" using the link below and your material will be removed. It will be our loss, but I understand the need to protect creative rights. To answer another frequent question: Gulfstream has been very good about all of this provided I add the note shown below. Let me be clear about this: I think the world of Gulfstream Aerospace.

    There is no prettier wing in existence than what you see on a GV or G and the best cockpit I've ever touched is in my trusty G If you've never practiced upset recovery in a high performance aircraft, you may not be prepared for the shock of hanging from your straps and you may not instinctively know how to unload the aircraft to safely recover. So you need to train in an airplane, the simulator is not good enough. The quality of training varies and in some cases what is being taught can kill. So let's get this out of the way first: There is a company in Texas that preaches: The key to getting it right the first time is to understand where things can go horribly wrong and understanding how to best make the airplane get back to right side up.

    Properly executed, each step of the process makes the next step easier. While acronyms sometimes serve more to confuse than clarify, you might consider this: We used to have the student close his or her eyes, smoothly invert the airplane, cage the attitude indicator, flip the airplane right-side-up, and say "recover.

    Unusual Attitudes & Upset Recovery

    But in those days it was common to have an attitude indicator lie to you. These days some attitude indicators have no moving parts at all and a mean-time-between-failures measured in years. Still, you could have an instrument lie to you and you should verify that an unusual attitude actually exists. It may result from one factor or a combination of several factors such as turbulence, distraction of cockpit duties, instrument failure, inattention, spatial disorientation, lost wingman, and transition from VMC to IMC.

    In most instances, these attitudes are mild enough to recover by reestablishing the proper attitude for the desired flight condition and resuming a normal crosscheck. It is imperative to immediately transition to instrument references any time you become disoriented or when outside visual references become unreliable. Keep in mind an unusual attitude can happen in clear conditions that can seem benign or nonthreatening, but it will be up to you to realize what the problem is. If you are at 38, feet in an Airbus A, is a 16 degree angle of attack ever appropriate?

    This, of course, refers to the ill fated Air France Flight I don't have a case study on that yet, but I will get to it. What about the opposite scenario?

    Shaking up your inner ear

    So you need to train in an airplane, the simulator is not good enough. A very important point to remember is that the instinctive reaction to a nose-down attitude is to pull back on the elevator control. The pilot believes the airplane is banking in the opposite direction. Critical Mach, from Eddie's notebook. What about at altitude? During the roll upright, smoothly move the yoke back to an aft of neutral position assuming you had pushed while over-banked. Not all aircraft pitch down when stalled, some T-tailed, swept wing aircraft actually pitch up.

    Say you are at a lower altitude with the throttles at idle, the speed brakes out, but the altimeter says you are maintaining altitude and the overspeed warning says you are accelerating well past redline? The attitude indicators say you are pretty much nose on the horizon and the sound of the airplane seems normal.

    Unusual Attitude Recovery

    In both cases, knowing what is normal for the aircraft in any situation can be a life saver. What pitch attitude and power setting will keep you alive in the traffic pattern? What about at altitude? Of course every airplane is different, but you should have a good idea of what is a normal pitch attitude and power setting for all phases of flight.

    If you have an Angle of Attack indicator, you should know how to use it.

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    And don't discount your other senses. Low speeds are usually quiet and high speeds are usually noisy. Once you've recognized the upset, the first thing you should do is disengage the autopilot, which could very well be the cause of the situation in the first place.

    TOPIC: Reacting Quickly in an Over-Banked Situation

    Next, the best thing you can do in all but one situation is unload the airplane. In plain English, you need to push forward on the yoke or stick to put the wing as close to 0-G as possible.

    CFI Brief: Unusual Attitude Recoveries

    The only exception is when the upset leaves the airplane mostly right side up and pulling gains you immediate altitude when close to the ground. The first and immediate benefit to unloading is removing the threat of an aerodynamic stall, which will send the airplane downward and risks a spin. Not all aircraft pitch down when stalled, some T-tailed, swept wing aircraft actually pitch up. Pitch up or down, a stall makes upset recovery more difficult and must be avoided. The second benefit of unloading the wing is the aircraft's roll rate improves dramatically.

    You will lose less altitude when recovering an inverted, nose-low airplane by pushing or pulling to near 0-G, rolling crisply to right side up, and then pulling to level flight. This holds true even when significantly nose low. Where a typical business jet can take 5 seconds or more to roll upright with 1-G or more on the wing, the roll can be completed in 1 or 2 seconds when closer to 0-G.

    There are two problems with thrust in an unusual attitude: Novice pilots are quick to grab a handful of throttles in an attempt to fix things as quickly as possible, but can make things worse if their initial reaction is wrong.

    Consider two alternate strategies when it comes to power lever management. Of course aircraft with speed brakes have another arrow in the quiver that can help in a nose-low situation. But grabbing the speed brake handle at the wrong moment can turn a moderate nose-high situation into a severe nose-low upset. Consider leaving the boards alone unless the nose is very low and the airspeed indicator and the "barber pole" are merging into a single pointer.

    Notice that at 0. Waiting until step four to roll the aircraft has two benefits that some pilots may not have considered. It gives you a second to decide which direction you need to roll and unloading the wing makes the roll faster. Note that the roll is handled with ailerons only. Fighter pilots have long known the danger of "rolling G's" but the risk of damage is even higher in an airplane not designed for combat maneuvering.

    Recovery from Unusual Aircraft Attitudes

    To complete the recovery, roll to wings level, if necessary, as the nose approaches the horizon. Recover to slightly nose-low attitude to reduce the potential for entering another upset. Check airspeed, and adjust thrust and pitch as necessary. Your email address will not be published. Pitch attitude unintentionally more than 25 deg, nose high, and increasing.

    Ability to maneuver decreasing. Recognize and confirm the situation. Disengage autopilot and auto-throttle. Apply as much as full nose-down elevator. Roll to obtain a nose-down pitch rate. Reduce thrust underwing-mounted engines. Approaching horizon, roll to wings level. Check airspeed, adjust thrust. Avoidance and Recognition are as important as recovery, if not more so. Effective monitoring by both pilots of the flight path and of each other cannot be over emphasized.

    Even on those aircraft with fly-by-wire primary controls and envelope protections, pilots must remain aware that certain system failures can degrade these protections in which case the recovery actions outlined in this and related SKYbrary articles will apply.

    The onset of an unusual aircraft attitude, in a commercial transport aircraft, operating a normal passenger or cargo flight, is usually quite slow but the flight crew realisation that this circumstance exists is usually quite sudden. It is most important to work out what is really happening before reacting on the controls. The actions required to correct an upset must be practised in the full flight simulator for the specific aircraft type, and on one which is approved for this type of training. It can only reproduce the behaviour of the real aircraft within the parameters of the data package used in the simulator.

    Test pilots do not deliberately lose control of their aircraft just to get data for the simulator manufacturer. For example, no simulator can reproduce the behaviour of the real aircraft in extreme attitudes when fully stalled. Within the aviation industry, some divergent views still exist over appropriate recovery techniques.