Whether flying with checkride applicants or even seasoned aviators, it is common for pilots to exhibit a strong dislike for, or even a fear of accomplishing, any type of stalls. It’s the classic Catch-22: The more we hate them, the less we practice them; and the less we practice them, the more we hate them. The latest method in training stalls is to recover from any impending stall the moment the stall warning system is activated, which does little to dispel any ingrained fear of stalling. Stalls should be respected, but not feared.
There is nothing dangerous or wrong with stalling an airplane at a safe altitude. Indeed, there is truly no better way to learn how an airplane reacts to a stall than by actually experiencing them. And equal to learning stall-recovery procedures is recognizing the airplane’s subtle clues as it approaches the stall and what it takes to get into a stall. The objective of performing stalls during training is to develop and heighten a pilot’s pre-stall recognition and post-stall recovery skills. When these skills are weak or nonexistent, the slightest distraction can lead to an unrecoverable stall/spin at low altitude that the pilot, unfortunately, may never have seen coming.
The FAA’s airman certification standard (ACS) regarding the performance of stalls during checkrides continues to evolve. For private pilot applicants, recovery from stalls is still made after a full stall has occurred. But the Commercial Pilot ACS was recently modified (June 2018), permitting the designated pilot examiner to specify recovery be made after a full stall rather than at the first bleep of the stall warning horn.
Commercial pilot applicants will also perform accelerated stalls. Be sure to leave the flaps up, stabilize your speed in level flight using power to maintain approximately best angle of climb speed (VX). Check once again for traffic, roll smoothly into a 45-degree bank, and then pull sharply back on the control yoke. Done properly, the stall buffet will be pronounced and immediate because of the higher G-loading, rather than a gradually reducing airspeed. Recovery is then just as immediate by simply releasing the back-pressure to “unload” the wing, while simultaneously rolling (coordinated) back to a wings-level attitude. Stall complete!
Angle of attack indicators or similar new electronic gadgetry are aiming to mitigate or even eliminate the risk of encountering inadvertent stalls. However, there is no quick fix for stall anticipation and recognition—and no amount of system sophistication or fancy gadgets can eliminate disaster when pilots misinterpret or ignore the big picture signals of impending stalls: aircraft attitude, power, airspeed, density altitude, bank angle, and G-loading. Even fully equipped twenty-first-century airliners can fall to the ground when their experienced and trained pilots cannot recognize an impending stall or how to effectively recover from one if encountered.
Many checkride applicants say they’ve never performed stalls solo in the practice area. Considering this, it’s no wonder that so many pilots are draped in fear while doing stalls during their checkrides. So much of learning to fly is based on building confidence, both in yourself and in your airplane. That confidence grows and is reinforced by taking away the safety net of the instructor’s presence while practicing solo takeoffs and landings, steep turns, slow flight, cross-countries, ground reference maneuvers—and, yes, even stalls. That’s why solo experience is such an important requirement for earning your private pilot certificate.
Your CFI should encourage you to practice power-on and -off stalls in various flap and angle-of-bank configurations until you’re both confident that you can practice them safely on your own. Then while you are flying solo in the practice area, you should be sharpening your skills and confidence by performing all the training maneuvers you’ve learned. Too often, solo time in the practice area is spent tooling around, enjoying the view. Don’t be that student.
Get comfortable with stalls and you will never find yourself in one that you never saw coming. That is the reason we learn and practice stalls in the first place.
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