Apparently the anti-spin camp shouts the loudest because the FAA doesn't require pilots to demonstrate spin entry and recovery except for flight instructor certificate candidates.
But, do you want to know something? If you look at the subject of spin training in terms of practical application, both sides are wrong. Well, maybe the pro spin-training camp isn't totally wrong, but it isn't totally right either. For the most part, it wants pilots to learn how to recover from fully developed spins that start unrealistically. Neither school addresses the real cause of stall/spin accidents - lousy control coordination and speed control.
Traditional spin training is not the answer to preventing stall/spin accidents. It's a fact that even if pilots were taught how to recover from a fully developed spin, it would prevent few, if any, stall/spin accidents. This is because in most stall/spin accidents, the airplane is too low to allow the spin to fully develop. Usually, the airplane is still in the early transition phase, barely past the first turn, when it hits the ground.
At one time spins were part of every student pilot's training. In fact, it was such a normal part of training that students with fewer than 20 hours in their logbooks would be in the practice area spinning their brains out - "Wow, Charley, I got 13 turns out of one today!" It was just no big deal.
However, even with spin training, stall/spin accident statistics in the "good old days" were still appalling. Today, stall/spin accounts for a small percentage of all general aviation accidents, but according to the 1997 AOPA Air Safety Foundation's Nall Report, approximately 60 percent of approach accidents result from stall/spin, what the ASF calls "steep turn/stall." And when stall/spin accidents do occur, they are almost always fatal. So, what's going on?
Obviously we have a training problem we haven't addressed adequately. Even with all the "stall recognition" training currently required, pilots are still spinning airplanes into the ground. Apparently we're not giving students the right kind of training in the right places so, when they earn their pilot certificates, they don't know what they're doing. If they did, stall/spin statistics would be much lower.
A major contributor to the stall/spin problem is that we simply don't spend enough time hammering at the basic concepts of control coordination, attitude, and speed control. If pilots kept the ball in the middle and/or monitored the nose attitude (therefore the speed), stall/spin accidents would all but disappear and this discussion wouldn't be necessary.
For an airplane to actually spin, as opposed to spiral, two elements must be present - yaw and an excessive angle of attack that results in a stall. If either one of these elements is missing, the airplane won't spin. If a pilot stalls an airplane when the slip/skid ball is centered, the airplane simply stalls. If the ball is off center but the speed (angle of attack) is above stall for the given situation, the airplane just slips or skids.
It's important that pilots know how to handle everything an airplane is capable of throwing at them - and this includes spins. But the training to prevent stall/spin accidents has to include more than just the traditional yank-and-stomp entries and recoveries. If it doesn't, the training doesn't mirror real life and won't do much good.
In spin training, as it's too often given, students slow the airplane to stall speed in a nose-high, wings-level attitude. Then they stomp the rudder to the floor - and the ride begins. After a few turns the instructor tells the student to reduce power to idle, reverse the rudder (apply rudder opposite the spin's direction), ease the stick forward to break the stall, and fly out of the resulting dive.
Students have now seen a spin, and they know how to recover from one. That does not in any way mean, however, these students are safer after the lesson than before it. An unintentional stall/spin that ends in an accident never happens as it does in the lesson.
Stall/spin accidents occur because a number of relatively minor mistakes mesh insidiously. The mistakes are easy to make and small enough to be almost unnoticeable. They happen individually, then join and compound one another until the airplane cranks into a spin - usually at an altitude too low to allow a recovery.
The most common stall/spin accident happens this way. The airplane is in its landing configuration and on the traffic pattern's base leg. The pilot overshoots the turn from base to final approach. It doesn't matter whether the wind pushed the airplane or the pilot simply waited too long to make the turn. The important thing is that the pilot suddenly sees the runway centerline off to the left (in left traffic) - and realizes the screw-up.
To get the airplane's nose back on centerline, the pilot starts to tighten the turn by increasing the bank angle. This is no problem - until the bank angle becomes uncomfortable. Next comes the voice of the pilot's flight instructor, saying never to bank too steeply when low to the ground. So, the pilot resolves to hold the current bank angle; no more.
Everything would be just fine if the pilot held that bank angle long enough to turn back to the final approach leg, but stall/spin accident pilots don't exhibit that patience. They try to speed up the turn by using excess inside rudder (the rudder pedal on the inside of the turn) to help drag the nose around. Most of the time, they don't even realize they're doing it. They want the nose to go to the left, so they step on the left rudder to "help it along."
When the pilot steps on the inside rudder, the nose does start moving faster but, at the same time, the bank angle wants to increase. Neutral ailerons won't maintain the bank angle, so the pilot applies outside, or opposite, aileron to keep the bank constant.
So there he is, with left rudder to keep the airplane turning and right aileron to maintain the bank angle. At this point, the skid ball is nailed to the end of its smiling tube.
This is sloppy flying, but it's not immediately fatal. It takes another mistake to give it teeth.
Remember, the airplane - let's say it's a Cessna 152 - is in approach configuration. With the flaps down, its drag has increased. Also remember, when a pilot cross-controls an airplane its drag skyrockets because it's flying sideways through the air. Even if the nose stays at the same pitch angle, the increased drag scrubs off a few knots of airspeed and the airplane decelerates.
Now we come to a part of the problem caused by unrealistic stall training. Most pilots have never seen an airplane stall with its nose at or below the horizon. They usually associate stalls with the nose pointing skyward and the yoke full back. Unfortunately, that's not how a landing Cessna 152 stalls in real life. With the flaps down, the 152's nose is at quite a down-angle, and it will run out of airspeed long before the nose comes up to the horizon. Most other airplanes behave the same way.
So, there we are. Left rudder, right aileron, power back, flaps down, and the nose well below the horizon. All it takes to bring the stall/spin mix to a boil is for the pilot to let the nose slide slowly up during the turn. Between the skid and the turn, the airplane's stall speed has already gone up a few knots. The flaps have added still more drag, and if the flaps are extended fully, they are creating far more drag than lift. So, when the nose comes up a few degrees, the airplane is eager to shed still more speed.
When something like a Cessna 152 stalls in this kind of cross-controlled configuration, it reacts quickly and almost violently. (It's interesting to note that a 152 in this configuration is more willing to snap into a spin than one of the "hot" aerobatic airplanes such as a Pitts Special.) The airplane suddenly rolls to the inside of the turn and drops its nose at the same time. From the cockpit, it looks as if the airplane went inverted, but it's not. It's close though.
Turning to final approach, the airplane is 400 to 500 feet above the ground. If the pilot doesn't stop the rotation in its first few degrees of movement, before the nose tucks down or the wings are past 90 degrees - the outcome is a forgone conclusion.
What we've just described is the 20 seconds preceding most base-to-final stall/spin accidents. There's little argument that this is the way accidents usually happen. That being the case, then, why don't we train to recognize, avoid, and/or recover from this situation.
The key to training that will eliminate stall/spin accidents is to develop and use a training scenario that's the same as real life in all respects but one - altitude. It should be 5,000 feet above the ground, not 500 feet. The student should duplicate the turning, cross-controlled aspect of the situation. Because real life often includes a period of some confusion, the instructor should provide some by distracting the student at critical moments.
To re-create real life, the student establishes a glide and trims for glide speed. We'd like to have the flaps down, but most training aircraft are placarded against spins with flaps, so that's a no-no. With flaps the results are even more exciting (or so we're told). Suddenly, the instructor tells the student that he's just passed runway centerline.
"Get the airplane back over there! Come on, hurry! Get some rudder in there to keep the nose moving. Don't let that bank angle increase. Crank some opposite aileron in there. Hey! Don't let that nose drop. Keep that back pressure in there. Yeah, keep the nose up just a little. Just a little more."
The student obediently does his thing and somewhere in the middle of this verbal onslaught, the speed generally drops enough that the airplane stalls and whips over the top. If this happens during a power approach, a Cessna 152 literally snaps over the top because the propeller slip stream makes the tail surfaces that much more effective, so less rudder displacement is needed to induce the required yaw.
In cross-controlled stalls different airplanes react in subtly different ways, with the 152 being the most exciting of those we're familiar with. Some airplanes exhibit a potentially dangerous condition that students and instructors should recognize when doing cross-controlled stalls. They give the appearance of spinning but the airspeed increases dramatically because they are spiraling, not spinning. In a real spin, the airspeed hovers right at stall speed. Instructors have to monitor the airspeed of these airplanes - some Cherokee models are among them - and recover from the faux spin (spiral) as soon as the airspeed starts increasing.
Recovering from a real cross-controlled spin depends on what part of the spin you're in. If the airplane has just stalled and started to snap over, unloading the elevator (pushing the yoke forward), hitting full power, and applying opposite rudder will generally stop it. The pilot has to do this instantly, before the wings go past vertical. If the nose has tucked down and the wings have started to rotate, power works against you. Now you must use a standard spin recovery - power off, neutralize the ailerons, full opposite rudder, elevators forward.
One of the goals of this maneuver is to "feel" what the airplane is doing. Just before it unhooks and tucks over, any elevator pressure your hands feel will begin to disappear, and the controls will suddenly go "soft." This is your clue that the airplane is losing speed and about to stall. At that point, if you remove the yaw by centering the ball with rudder and aileron, and decrease the angle of attack, nothing is going to happen, other than losing a little more altitude than you'd like.
Do not try this without an instructor who is trained, qualified, and comfortable flying spins. Make sure the instructor has actual spin experience. Simply having sat through demonstrated spins during CFI training doesn't count as being qualified. You might want to ask for references - students the instructor has given spin training to. You don't want to be up there exploring new territory with an instructor who has never been there before. Just as important, make sure the airplane you fly is approved for spins.
Perhaps the most important benefit of cross-control spin training is learning to recognize the situation that causes a stall/spin accident so we can avoid it. All of us overshoot final once in a while. When that happens, we'll recognize we've just made the mistake which sets up "that" situation. At the very least, the remedy is to consciously force ourselves to make a gentle turn at a shallow bank angle to intercept final - not to honk it around.
The real cure is to recognize the mistake of overshooting the turn to final approach for what it is and to go around for another approach rather than try to save this one. The worst that can happen is you get to log a little more flight time. And that's not all bad.
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