“But why would I want to fly slow?”

Most people know that I don’t like anything slow.  I was attempting to grasp the purpose of having to do this when flying.

 “Well, let’s say you are flying in a standard traffic pattern and there’s a plane ahead of you.  You don’t want to catch up with the guy in front of you.  You need to go into slow flight.”  Well, that makes sense. 

So what’s the big deal?  Why is slow flight something special you have to learn?  The overly-simple (but, for our purposes, sufficient) answer is that your ability to maintain altitude (read: keep yourself up in the air, as opposed to plummeting to the ground), is dependent upon maintaining the plane’s attitude and airspeed.  If you fly too slow, no matter how much you pull back on the yoke to get the nose up, down you go.  This is called a stall. Unlike stalling on the road, stalling in the sky is a pretty big deal.  In addition to slow flight, I got to try out a full stall.  As you may recall from my medical exam, Dr. Turissi told me that getting through stalls was a key phase of getting through your flight training.  Somehow I thought I would be practicing emergency procedures later in my program.  I felt a bit of nervous anticipation at facing this challenge early on in my training. 

We entered slow flight by slowing down to about 15 knots above the stall speed (stall speed is specified by the plane manufacturer, and considerately displayed on the plane controls).  We then reduced speed by 5 more knots, and then, after a bit, reduced by 5 more knots.  If you are at all good with math, you will note I was a mere 5 knots away from stalling (aka, the “Dr. Turisi flight test barrier”).  There are several different ways to provoke a stall. The point of all of them, however, is to simulate that you did something stupid, to cause the plane to rapidly lose altitude.  “Lose altitude” is the euphemistic/academic way of describing the sense that you are dropping out of the sky and about to crash.   After making some clearing turns, to rule out the chance of other aircraft being behind or below us, I began the process of stalling.

We began in a standard traffic-pattern speed.  Lucas then instructed me to reduce power to idle.  As the plane slowed down, I began to pull back at a steady rate, still maintainining the plane’s attitude.  When the airspeed got really low (a decrease of more than 5 knots), the stall started.  I felt the kind of drop you associate with rollercoasters.  I faintly recognized the high pitched sound of the warning system, as I felt us distinctly, decisively, and all too rapidly begin descending.  “Oh, I don’t like this,” I said out loud, more to myself than Lucas.  I could only imagine how it would look for us to be dropping down in daylight.  Night was my friend at this point.

One of the most difficult things to control at this point was my urge to pull back on the yoke.  It’s hard not to – all you want is for the nose to point up so that you stop losing altitude.  But this is really a misperception.  The up/down of the yoke is not the sole determinant of a plane’s ascent/descent.  The lack of airspeed is the real big problem.  You need to push on the yoke and “dive” to reach the level of airspeed that will enable you to climb back to a safe altitude.  We “dove” and then I pushed in on the throttle as instructed by my intrepid instructor.  How do flight instructors handle this?  I mean, driving instructors never have to go through simulating near-crashes. 

I made it.  I not only practiced slow flight, but I successfully made it through Dr. Turisi’s barrier point.  And, I didn’t even get an upset stomach.