One of the reasons pilots so frequently lose control in flight is they forget—or never were properly instructed—that an airplane’s published stall speed applies only when at gross weight, in a specified configuration and in level, 1G flight. Perhaps they believe that as long as their airspeed indicator shows a value above the bottom of the green arc, they can’t stall. So they wrack their Skyhawk into a steep turn to look at something on the ground, pull back on the yoke to maintain altitude and forget about angle of attack or increased G-loading.
The frequent result—an accelerated stall with too little altitude in which to recover—has become so common it has its own name: a moose-turn stall, after the classic loss of control accident when pilots try to orbit at low altitude over wildlife. Accelerated stalls, of course, have nothing to do with adding full power and watching the airspeed increase. “Acceleration” in this instance refers to the additional G-loading an airplane sustains in a constant-altitude turn. The simple fact is the airplane’s wing always stalls when we exceed its critical angle of attack, and to maintain altitude, we have to increase AoA when G-loading increases.
