Stall recovery in airliners.

[damo1089]

I'm currently just beginning my CPL training, but very close to the start of my flying, I was taught stall recovery. I understand that at higher speeds and altitudes, that high speed stalls can occur.

The AF447 documentary that I am watching says that a wing drop is something that to recover would require highly specialised training, which they inferred that the typical airline pilot would not recieve. Although they did say that that the pitot tubes were probably frozen over, which would make things a bit harder. Nonetheless, it seems, to me, in my initial flying training, that something like a stall recovery should be a fairly basic thing to be able to do.

My question is, are airline pilots taught advanced manual stall recovery techniques without a visual horizon?

[HEATHROW DIRECTOR]

Recommend you ask this on one of the aircrew forums rather than this one which is for spotters..

[Cloud Bunny]

I can only speak for Ryanair here in the UK/Europe but we are trained to recover from high altitude stalls and jet upsets amongst other things. I assume it's the same in every other major airline - can't see why it wouldn't be.
If the AF documentary you're watching is the same one we had over here a couple of days ago then I think the point they were trying to make was that military pilots spend there lives in unusual attitudes and are therefore more accustumed to the 'feel' of being in those situations and therefore theoretically would react quicker.

[L4key]

HD are you kidding! Can you imagine the abuse you'd receive if every spotter asked a question on the main forum!!

Plenty of pilots are kind enough to still answer questions from enthusiasts if you post them here from what I've seen. You know your onions for example but you still help people out on here.

I think this is a reasonable and interesting question but you can only imagine some of the tosh that would emanate from here. 'Can you do a loop in a 747?', 'What's your favourite colour plane?' would not be well received! :}

We enthusiasts don't need any more bad press on the other forums, if in doubt I would advise to keep it here and a mod may move it. Better that than the other way round!

[Intruder]

I'm currently just beginning my CPL training, but very close to the start of my flying, I was taught stall recovery. I understand that at higher speeds and altitudes, that high speed stalls can occur.

The AF447 documentary that I am watching says that a wing drop is something that to recover would require highly specialised training, which they inferred that the typical airline pilot would not recieve. Although they did say that that the pitot tubes were probably frozen over, which would make things a bit harder. Nonetheless, it seems, to me, in my initial flying training, that something like a stall recovery should be a fairly basic thing to be able to do.

My question is, are airline pilots taught advanced manual stall recovery techniques without a visual horizon?
Sorry, but you are the victim of media speculation and overdramatization.

High-speed stalls can and do occur. Almost none of them result in catastrophe. Recovery is the same as with lower-speed and -altitude stalls, though it takes patience because of the relative lack of thrust to recover airspeed and altitude.

Wing drop also can and does happen in any stall. Recovery is still the same -- reduce AOA with forward yoke, roll to wings level, recover from stall. It is NOT an "advanced" technique, but VERY basic!

We practice IMC stall recovery in simulators as a matter of routine training. ADIs and PFDs work quite well.

[AerocatS2A]

damo, if you're interested in advanced stall recovery I suggest you do some aerobatics. Then once you've done some, do some more, and then do some more again. When you have a few hundred hours of aeros under your belt you'll be very comfortable with unusual attitudes and all of the lovely ways a stall can occur and how to recover.

To your specific question, I don't know, I'm not an airline pilot. In our company (Dash 8s) we don't do much beyond stock standard stalls plus some unusual attitudes. In a turbo prop like ours high altitude is not a big concern :). The best way to avoid death by stalling is to NOT stall. You do that by having an acute awareness of your angle of attack.