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

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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 major cause of fatalities, often occurring in the traffic pattern where recovery is improbable, a problem exacerbated by unrealistic training that fails to instill a healthy fear of real-life, disorienting stalls.
The article details a fatal accident involving an experienced pilot who stalled and spun an unfamiliar Van's RV-4 during a low, tightening turn to final at a high-density altitude airport.
Key factors contributing to the accident included the pilot's unstable approach, the sensitive handling characteristics of the RV-4, and the challenging environmental conditions, collectively leading to an unrecoverable stall despite the pilot's extensive flight experience.

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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.