AFH Chapter 4-29 Upset Prevention and Recovery

Upset Prevention and Recovery

Unusual Attitudes Versus Upsets

An unusual attitude is commonly referenced as an unintended or unexpected attitude in instrument flight.

 

These unusual attitudes are introduced to a pilot during student pilot training as part of basic attitude instrument flying and continue to be trained and tested as part of certification for an instrument rating, aircraft type rating, and an airline transport pilot certificate.

 

A pilot is taught the conditions or situations that could cause an unusual attitude, with focus on how to recognize one, and how to recover from one.

 

As discussed at the beginning of this chapter, the term “upset” is inclusive of unusual attitudes.

 

An upset is defined as an event that unintentionally exceeds the parameters normally experienced in flight or training. These parameters are:

 

• Pitch attitude greater than 25°, nose up

 

• Pitch attitude greater than 10°, nose down

 

• Bank angle greater than 45°

 

• Within the above parameters, but flying at airspeeds inappropriate for the conditions.

 

(Note: The reference to inappropriate airspeeds describes a number of undesired aircraft states, including stalls.

 

However, stalls are directly related to AOA, not airspeed.)

 

Given the upset definition, there are a few key distinctions between an unusual attitude and an upset.

 

First, an upset includes stall events where unusual attitude training typically does not.

 

Second, an upset can include overspeeds or other inappropriate speeds for a given flight condition, which is also not considered part of unusual attitude training.

 

Finally, an upset has defined parameters; an unusual attitude does not.

 

For example, for training purposes an instructor could place the airplane in a 30° bank with a nose up pitch attitude of 15° and ask the student to recover and that would be considered an unusual attitude, but would not meet the upset parameters.

 

While the information that follows in this section could apply to unusual attitudes, the focus will be on UPRT.

 

The top four causal and contributing factors that have led to an upset and resulted in LOC-I accidents are:

 

1. Environmental factors

2. Mechanical factors

3. Human factors

4. Stall-related factors

 

With the exception of stall-related factors, which were covered in the previous section, the remaining causal and contributing factors to LOC-I accidents will be discussed further below.