Question for airline pilots

naunga

New Member
Just a nutty question that crossed my mind.

Any of you ever inadventantly stall your planes? Obviously with enough altitude to recover.

Just curious.

Naunga
 
Oh c'mon guys. I don't need details, just curious about the ability of a large plane to stall.

Surely some captain out there was in the cockpit when the FO
wink.gif
stalled the plane.

Naunga
 
No, we never get close to stall speed. If the airspeed starts trending low, the other pilot calls for a correction.

We do practice stalls in the sim.
 
[ QUOTE ]
^^^Do you ever practice them in the actual plane or just the sim?

Naunga

[/ QUOTE ]

We do them in the Learjet, as part of the training recurent and initial.

Unremarkable.

1. Stick shaker
2. Full power
3. Do not drop the nose. (like in a GA acft)
 
^^^So I take it the Lear doesn't loose in more altitude than a C172 would assuming a well-done recovery?

Naunga
 
Ideally it doesn't lose any.

There is no way to stall with normal power settings. (within reason) So the thought process is you are landing and have boned up the power setting, The first thing most pilots would want to do is push it over and let the momentum of the aircraft basically make it fly again. In the LJ and the Citation (the only jets I have flown) they have enough power to pull the airplane out of the stall on the thrust alone, so you do not need the momentum and you sure the heck do not want to be pointing it to the ground and adding power...

The unusal attidude is another one that is counter to what you learn in GA, on a nose up situation, you do not level the wings and pitch down, You keep the bank until you have powered over the hump (like a chandel) and are pointed somewhat down, this prevents a flame out on the inside engine of the rolling movement (at least that is how I rememeber it, there may be much much more to it than that)
 
I once got stick shaker (jet equivenlent to a stall warning horn) on the 727 while at just under 200 knots in a 30 degree bank turn with the speedbrakes (spoilers) out. Ever since, I stow the speedbrakes at 200 knots.
 
All the Kingairs I've flown have had very benign stall characteristics. The 1900 is just an overgrown Kingair, so although I've never flown it, I should imagine there's not much to it.

Ray
 
Never. Have done many various configuration stall recoveries in the simulator, however. Some pilots have to do 85/15 rides, which means 15% of their training is done in the actual aircraft. In that case, they would actually stall the aircraft.

Doing the stalls really is a non-event if it is handled correctly. I usually managed to keep from losing any altitude by just pushing the nose down about 5 degrees (but still maintaining positive pitch) and adding power smoothly just below max. The PNF will then tweak for maximum continuous power.

Basically it goes like this:
Pitch up to 10 degrees.
Airspeed bleeds off, maintain directional control and wings level.
At stick shaker activation, call "max power" or "max power, flaps 7/20" should you be in the landing configuration. Lower the nose about 5 degrees, and advance the power levers to an arms length.
Maintain the pitch attitude to clear the shaker. If the shaker is continuous, reduce pitch more.
Once a positive rate of climb is established, call for gear up. Once above flap retraction speed, call for flaps up.

You don't want to drop the nose a lot, because you'll lose a LOT of altitude. Also, you don't want the stick pusher to activate. It's a delicate balance between the two.
 
Do airliners actually get stalled in during testing? I thought that's what the stick pusher was for, to prevent the aircraft from getting into a position of stalling because if it entered a deep stall you might not come out. With that, don't ya'll just do approach to stalls in the airplane/sim?

Cheers


JOhn Herreshoff
 
Yeah, we don't actually do "full" stalls. You learn to recognize the stall at the shaker and recover before the full stall. The stick pusher is activated during certain parameters (19 degrees AOA on both AOA vanes for the 340B) to help the aircraft recover.

We did, however, disarm the stick shakers and disarm the stick pushers during sim training so we could recognize the buffet and full stall in the 340B. That isn't always done.
 
Some of the first crews to train on the Dojet did all their training, including stalls, in the airplane.

I did a 15% ride in the J41 and it did not include stalls. We mainly practiced takeoffs, landings, and a missed approach.

The main difference that I saw in the stalls in a large airplane and small one was procedural. In the airline training, we were told to hold altitude throughout the maneuver instead of terminating with a positive rate of climb. In my opinion, you should train like you fly and if I did unintentionally stall, I would not maintain level flight at what is probably low altitude (assuming landing or takeoff configuration).
 
Of course they do FULL STALLS in testing of airliners. Its EXTREMELY important to know what the aircraft is going to do around the stall AOA. You cant design the stick shaker or pusher correctly without this information. All those computer ninny engineers will tell you that they can determine stall characteristics with a computer. BS man!!! If that were true, there wouldnt be test pilots.
 
Back
Top