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Old 17th Sep 2008, 08:20
  #1790 (permalink)  
NigelOnDraft
 
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BUT shouldn't it also be intuitive in such a stall to command Flaps 15 and Firewall throttle?
Tell me an airline, or even any training school, that "teaches" Stall Recovery on Liftoff?

For almost every (and probably all) types I have flown, the primary stall recovery action is to lower the nose and "unstall" the wings. Power/reconfiguring are the backup actions post stall recovery (you might do the actions simultaneously, but their effect is later particularly in a jet). Lowering the nose on liftoff and land back on is too drastic to "teach" / "mandate", IMHO (even though it might be used in extremis).

We are in a takeoff situation - you have pretty much full thrust, and you assume you have Flaps... so the actions you mandate are somewhat inappropriate as a "drill". They are entirely appropriate should we choose to takeoff flapless or at half power... but this is not the intention.

Please also NB that a stick shaker on departure is an "interesting event". History might teach one to ignore the stick shaker and just fly the aircraft - see TWA Tristar @ JFK and even a recent VS747 incident. At a critical phase of flight, a stick shaker could be very distracting - and a good chance spurious. As above, you can only assume you are taking off with the correct performance and configuration.

I still think you are attacking this the wrong way. If the aircraft did takeoff Flap/Slatless, then the "system" failed - a combination of aircraft design, regulators and crew. The "solution" is not to "blame" anyone (blame is not the purpose of accident investigations), but to prevent future occurrences. In turn, I do not believe that will be solved by "teaching" crews to fly out of such situaitons - in many cases I suspect it would be impossible anyway The solution is to prevent a Flap/Slatless takeoff in the first place...

NoD
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