Pampernaut love-rat space shuttle pilot prangs plane

Stalling is quite recoverable

"No amount of stick waggling will cure it and it's fatal." Bull. Stalling is quite recoverable, and in fact any pilot is required to be able to stall an aircraft and recover it. In fact, if you've been to any airshow and seen an aerobatics performance, you've likely seen somebody perform a hammerhead stall. All that is needed is to regain airspeed so the airflow over over the wings once again sticks to the upper surface of the wing - generally, all that is needed to recover from a stall is to point the nose downward for a bit (and usually add power).

You *may* be thinking of a spin, which can follow a stall, but even those are generally recoverable - in fact, a spin is one common way to lose a lot of altitude in a hurry (e.g. you are in a glider and are in the updraft of a thunderstorm, and really don't like the idea of being sucked into the cloud, and don't have dive brakes). There are aircraft that can go into an unrecoverable flat spin, but those aircraft tend to be equipped with an emergency spin recovery chute.

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Stalling is not fatal unless you're an idiot, stall recovery is one of the first things a pilot learns. To recover from a stall push the stick forwards and if you're a cautious type firewall the throttle, the aircraft will regain airspeed and the wing recover from its stalled condition. In fact many light aircraft will do most of the recovery for you all you have to do is raise the nose back up once the speed has recovered and maybe trimming the aircraft out so it doesn't happen again.

Falling in an uncontrolled manner from the sky sounds more like a spin, this is a bit more complicated but again spin avoidance and recovery is taught to all pilots at the PPL stage, basically don't apply full rudder just as you enter a stall and things should be fine.

IRRC....

In a slightly obtuse aside: Delta-winged aircraft such as the Concorde or the Shuttle are very difficult stall; that's the whole point of the delta wing!

They can get to very high AoAs without loss of lift or control. It may look like a stall to the untrained as their sink rate rises dramatically at such an attitude, however they are still easily controllable (for high-trained definitions of 'easy').

Also IRRC the 'correct' method for landing most aircraft is to be at the point of a stall at the moment the wheels contact the ground, otherwise you risk bouncing back into the air or skidding (and blowing tyres) when you apply the wheel brakes. (NOT true for carrier ops though!)

"aircraft tumbling out of the sky like a clothes horse" - ah, that would be a "Lomcovák" - rather spectacular and frightening-looking manoeuvre, but easily recoverable and not fatal (unless performed at 500' AGL!)

I think you may have been watching too much of the 'flat spin!' bit of Top Gun - to achieve complete loss of lift or control requires some horribly drastic mismanagement of the aircraft (*cough* Air France *cough*)

PS, did anyone else notice that in the final battle of 'Top Gun' Iceman was 'hundreds' of miles away and 'Maverick' got there in 30 seconds? I did not know F14s could do about Mach15...

err?

Too tabloid for the Reg? There *is* a reason for the Red Top styling.

Weather? Doesn't have to be stall or spin..

Agreed. I practiced both of these on Microlight (weight.shift types) and they're relatively easy to recover from. Indeed, one glider I took up, when stalled would just 'porpoise' Nose drop, pick up speed, start flying again, even with the stick back. You'd lose height, but not that much.

Weather's the most likely, to catch an experienced pilot. I remember in a microlight on a long final approach, safe height (300'), safe speed(About 50kt.), Suddenly hit this hole in the air. Almost instantly I was at 50', well short of the runway. Just power up again. No bother. If there'd been trees in the way, a totally different story...