Pilots Must Be Prepared for ‘Unacceptable Stall Behavior’

Routine post-maintenance check flight turns catastrophic.

Peter Garrison

Tuesday, July 21, 2026 at 08:00 AM ET

Verified

Edited By:

Travis Tingle

Even a slight alteration in the position of a stall strip can change the stalling behavior of an airplane. [Credit: Adobe Stock]

Key Takeaways:

An experienced flight crew crashed a Hawker 900XP during a post-maintenance stall check, initiated in probable icing conditions and outside specified altitude and visibility parameters.
The NTSB attributed the accident to the crew's decision to fly in icing and the manufacturer's insufficient training requirements for pilots performing such high-risk tests.
The unexpected and rapid stall triggered an instinctive, startle-driven response in the pilot, causing him to mistakenly pull back on the controls throughout the descent, overriding training.

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It is a truth universally acknowledged that when an airplane stalls, the pilot must push its nose down. And yet it sometimes happens that even quite experienced pilots do the opposite. That was the case in February 2024, when two airline transport pilots, who had a combined total of more than 23,000 hours in their logbooks, conducted a post-maintenance stall check on a Hawker Beechcraft 900XP.

The stall check is required after the leading edges of the wings have been removed for a routine, every-four-years inspection. The purpose is to confirm that some subtle, perhaps invisible distortion of leading-edge contour or change in the position of a stall strip has not changed the stalling behavior of the airplane.