Checkride

How Examiners View PTS Changes To Slow Flight

Change is good. Although one of life's most oft-repeated refrains, change still quickens the pulse, raises the blood pressure, and gives an average person dry mouth. Change is stressful. August 2002 certainly stressed flight instructors and students alike as changes to the FAA's private and commercial pilot Practical Test Standards (PTS) brought the flight training industry back to a point we had reluctantly abandoned in May 1995. That was the month in which these two documents introduced a controversial change in the slow-flight procedure. That was then. This is now.

Although the current PTS has been in force for nearly half a year as you read this, flight instructors and students still confess fear that an inordinate percentage of applicants will fall out of the sky while striving to meet the new standard of plus 10 to minus 0 knots above the selected configuration's stall speed. If you have this concern, relax - it just is not well founded. A properly trained pilot does not fall from the sky through some membrane-thin lower edge of the airplane's performance envelope. This is true because one of the primary reasons for learning slow flight is to recognize the onset of a stall and prevent it. Simple as that!

Perhaps what we name a procedure hints at that procedure's conduct. The Private Pilot PTS, for example, has changed the procedure's name almost as often as it has changed the maneuver's description. For example, the current PTS calls for applicants to perform a task called "Maneuvering during slow flight." The name is straightforward, as is the requirement that applicants establish and maintain "an airspeed at which any further increase in angle of attack, increase in load factor, or reduction in power, would result in an immediate stall." The PTS makes this clear and concise.

The superceded PTS, though still naming the procedure "Maneuvering During Slow Flight," instructed applicants to stabilize "...the airspeed at 1.2 VS1, plus 10/minus 5 knots." This definition conformed to the Airplane Flying Handbook's description of "maneuvering during slow flight" fairly well, while the Handbook's paragraph following that, titled "Maneuvering during slow flight at minimum airspeed," better describes the current PTS philosophy regarding slow flight.

Prior to the two latest Private Pilot Practical Test Standards (FAA-S-8081-14S and -14AS, respectively) FAA-S-8081-1AS referred to "Maneuvering at critically slow airspeed" and simply instructed applicants to maintain a critically slow airspeed while in coordinated straight and turning flight. The anxiety that many flight instructors and applicants now express springs from the fact that a high percentage of those who completed their training before May 1995 have moved into arenas of aviation other than flight instruction. Only the rare high-time career flight instructors and pilot examiners remember that slow flight by its earliest definition targeted an airspeed that was immediately above a stall.

Even our beloved old Flight Training Handbook (FTH) discussed the procedure as "Maneuvering at minimum controllable airspeed" (a term that has gradually drifted into the multiengine realm with a meaning notably different from the concerns of a single-engine pilot). Things change. The reason for all the practicing and demonstrating of this flight condition that you do by the time you attain that coveted private pilot certificate has not changed. Quoting the old FTH (the newer AFH has a grammatical error at this point, so we shall quote the FTH): "The ability to determine the characteristic control responses of any airplane is of great importance to pilots. They must develop this awareness in order to avoid stalls in any airplane they may fly at the slower airspeeds which are characteristic of takeoffs, climbs, and landing approaches." From a safety standpoint, it makes excellent sense.

One issue that can lead to controversy between examiners and applicants is the assertion in the Airplane Flying Handbook on page 5-1: "The objective of maneuvering during slow flight is to develop the pilot's sense of feel and ability to use the controls correctly, and to improve proficiency in performing maneuvers that require slow airspeeds." So far, there is little argument. The AFH continues: "Maneuvering during slow flight should be performed using both instrument indications and outside visual reference. It is important that pilots form the habit of frequently referencing flight instruments for airspeed, altitude, and attitude indications while flying at slow speeds." Now the arguments begin! The PTS instructs examiners to give special attention to each applicant's collision avoidance habits, including during the maneuvers required in flight. Almost all pilot examiners have endless stories of applicants performing slow flight without once looking outside the airplane, so intent are they on the flight instruments.

When you take your checkride, your training should have included an appropriate scan that involves snatching the required information from the instrument panel as your eyes segment the surrounding sky for potential intruders. The Aeronautical Information Manual (AIM) in 7-5-1, Accident Cause Factors, continues to list "Failure to see and avoid objects or obstructions" as one of the 10 most frequent cause factors for general aviation accidents that involve the pilot-in-command. While the PTS does not mention this need for applicants to be observant in its description of the task, the preface to the PTS includes a section called "Special Emphasis Areas." It alludes to collision avoidance, among other things, and it instructs applicants and flight instructors: "Although these areas may not be specifically addressed under each task, they are essential to flight safety and will be evaluated during the practical test. In all instances, the applicant's actions will relate to the complete situation." (Emphasis in original.)

What is appropriate, since the new AFH seems to concentrate on instrument importance while the PTS appears to demand eyeballs outside? The AIM addresses this in 8-1-6(c), Scanning for Other Aircraft. Your pilot examiner should judge applicant scanning on entry 3, which advises: "Studies show that the time a pilot spends on visual tasks inside the cabin should represent no more than one-quarter to one-third of the scan time outside, or no more than 4 to 5 seconds on the instrument panel for every 16 seconds outside. Since the brain is already trained to process sight information that is presented from left to right, one may find it easier to start scanning over the left shoulder and proceed across the windshield to the right."

Actually, your pilot examiner will not likely have a stopwatch while timing your areas of scan, but he or she should have observed your habit to see how it fits into the PTS cry for good collision avoidance habits during slow flight. Your examiner will, however, pay obvious close attention to the limitations outlined in the PTS regarding airspeed, altitude, and bank angle as you fly slow.

For private pilot applicants, the old familiar requirements to maintain the specified altitude within plus or minus 100 feet (or 30 meters), and the heading within plus or minus 10 degrees, remain. The PTS has relaxed the bank parameters somewhat. Prior to August 2002, private pilot applicants were to maintain a tolerance of plus 0/minus 10 degrees of bank. If you are preparing for your checkride today, the PTS simply calls on you to maintain a specified angle of bank plus or minus 10 degrees. Where the PTS giveth, the PTS also taketh away - the airspeed tolerance that recently existed (1.2 V_S1 plus 10/minus 5 kt) has changed to plus 10/minus 0 kt. This is logical, since the PTS defines slow flight as "an airspeed at which any further increase in angle of attack, increase in load factor, or reduction in power, would result in an immediate stall."

For commercial pilot applicants, the various revisions of the Practical Test Standards have included changes evoking somewhat less emotion than those we have just re- viewed for private pilots. For example, FAA-S-8081-2.2 called for commercial pilot applicants to perform "Maneuvering during slow flight" (a name that never changed in the commercial PTS series) while not exceeding plus or minus 50 feet and maintaining bank angles plus/minus 5 degrees and airspeeds within plus/minus 5 kt above stall speed. On October 1, 1994, the specification of 1.2 V_S1 airspeed appeared in FAA-S-8081-12, adding a requirement to roll out on a specified heading within plus/minus 5 degrees. That remained unchanged until May 1, 1997, when FAA-S-8081-12A relaxed the rollout to plus/minus 10 degrees of heading just as it doubled the tolerance for maintaining a heading.

For five years, the style for demonstrating slow flight remained unchanged, until FAA-S-8081-12B redefined its objective by repeating the Private Pilot PTS's call for commercial applicants to establish and maintain an airspeed at which any further increase in angle of attack, increase in load factor, or reduction in power would result in an immediate stall. Other tolerances remain unchanged.

Although examiners have followed the changed criteria for nearly six months now, experience shows that problems arise only when there was not enough precheckride practice using the current standards. As one private pilot applicant said, if a pilot can hold airspeed within 10 kt above one number, it should be no problem to do so using another. He's right!

Dave Wilkerson is a designated pilot examiner, writer/photographer, and historian. A commercial pilot, he has been a CFI for 22 years and has given about 2,000 hours of dual instruction.