PPRuNe Forums - View Single Post - Relation between IAS and Mach number
View Single Post
Old 19th May 2006, 23:40
  #25 (permalink)  
bubbers44
 
Join Date: Aug 2005
Location: fl
Posts: 2,525
Likes: 0
Received 0 Likes on 0 Posts
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

This quote comes from the FAA's "Airplane Upset Recovery Training Aid" referring to Mach stability:

"This stability can be independent of airspeed if, for example, the airplane crosses a cold front. When the outside air temperature changes, the Mach number changes, even though the indicated airspeed may not change."

Now I thought that at a constant flight level, the relationship between IAS and Mach number is independant of temperature. So if you maintain a constant flight level and constant IAS, you also fly a constant Mach number even if the air temperature changes.

But then the source document was written by senior test pilots from Boeing and Airbus, so maybe I have got it wrong??

Going back to this original question I say mach would change because it is soley related to temperature. If temp decreased, mach would increase because TAS would be constant and the speed of sound would decrease.
bubbers44 is offline