upset

No surprise— upset recovery worse when surprised.

By Dave English

New research in The International Journal of Aerospace Psychology on the influence of surprise on upset recovery performance in airline pilots is no surprise. Hint— unexpected unusual attitudes caused “significantly more difficulties”. Best be over-prepared. And remember, this was still in a sim. If it happens for real, in a plane, with weird g-forces and the ground in a strange place on the windshield, I’ll bet our performance will be worse than what the researchers saw! Full paper is free online: The Influence of Surprise on Upset Recovery Performance in Airline Pilots Annemarie Landman, Eric L. Groen, M. M. (René) … Continue reading No surprise— upset recovery worse when surprised.

Wake? Wait!

By Dave English

The standard advice to avoid a wake turbulence encounter is to wait a bit, to give some room when taking off or landing right behind a large aircraft. And that is good, practical, physics-based advice. But what about when you hit wake turbulence and have to recover? What’s being rediscovered is when actually encountering serious wake turbulence, the best thing to do is: Nothing. Well, not just nothing, but initially just wait. That’s right, wait. You may be rapidly going inverted but don’t do anything yet. Breathe for a second. Resist the strong urge from our primal flying nature to quickly move the … Continue reading Wake? Wait!