Ultimate Issue: Analyzing a Fatal Final Turn

Van's RV-4 accident presents a tragic case study of the stall-spin scenario.

Friday, July 19, 2024 at 08:56 AM ET

Verified

There’s a reason students are taught to establish 1.3 Vs on the downwind leg, begin the descent abeam of the threshold, and maintain a good speed margin throughout the approach. [iStock]

Key Takeaways:

Stall-spin accidents remain a persistent and often fatal problem, particularly in the traffic pattern, despite modern pilot training emphasizing avoidance.
Current pilot training for stalls is criticized for its lack of realism, failing to prepare pilots for the sudden, unexpected, and disorienting nature of inadvertent real-world stalls.
A fatal accident involving an experienced pilot in a high-performance homebuilt at high altitude highlights how an unstabilized approach, critical angle of attack in a turn, and potential aircraft unfamiliarity can lead to such incidents.
Preventing these accidents necessitates strict adherence to established approach procedures, maintaining adequate speed margins, and a realistic understanding of stall dynamics and aircraft-specific characteristics.

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In 1949, the Civil Aeronautics Authority (the precursor to the FAA), reacting to the number of training accidents involving spins, removed the spin from the private pilot syllabus. Some pilots who knew how to spin an airplane suspected that anyone who didn’t wasn’t really a pilot.

Cooler heads observed that the majority of unintentional spins occurred in the traffic pattern, particularly on the base-to-final turn, where there was no room to recover even if the pilot knew how to. So knowing how to spin and recover served no purpose, besides its entertainment value—which, to be sure, was considerable.

Peter Garrison

Peter Garrison taught himself to use a slide rule and tin snips, built an airplane in his backyard, and flew it to Japan. He began contributing to FLYING in 1968, and he continues to share his columns, ""Technicalities"" and ""Aftermath,"" with FLYING readers.