Maneuvering during slow flight
Flying just above the stall warning: mushy controls, the backside of the power curve, speed instability, and the reason the maneuver is flown without the horn.
13 min read · Flight maneuvers
After this lesson you can
- State what slow flight is for testing purposes, and the target airspeed that defines it.
- Describe what happens to control effectiveness as airspeed decreases.
- Explain the region below L over D max, and why pitch controls speed there.
- Recognize speed instability and the action that arrests it.
- Manage the risks the ACS attaches to the task.
Slow flight is not a stall and not an approach to one. For training and testing purposes it means slowing to, maneuvering at, and recovering from an airspeed at which the airplane is still capable of controlled flight without activating the stall warning - and doing so in the configurations that belong to takeoffs, climbs, descents, approaches to landing and go-arounds.
That last clause is the point of the whole task. Every phase where an airplane is naturally slow is a phase where the pilot needs the airplane to still answer, and this maneuver is where that is learned deliberately rather than discovered on a base leg.
The rest of this lesson
- 1.Finding the airspeed
- 2.Why the controls go mushy
- 3.The backside of the power curve
- 4.The risks the ACS attaches to slow flight
These 4 sections, their figures, the checks along the way and the end-of-lesson quiz come with the PPL track. Paid once, yours for good.
Key terms
Try to recall each definition before turning the card.