Bill Crawford’s Flightlab Blog

The then CAA (now FAA) removed the spin requirement from the private pilot flight test in 1949, but the arguments over spin training never let up. There were even Congressional hearings, in 1980, in which the Subcommittee on Investigations and Oversight of the House Committee on Science and Technology, clearly wowed by a witness list of right-stuff test pilots, recommended that spin training be restored—a recommendation the FAA did not follow.

Under FAR Part 61, an applicant for a private pilot certificate is required to receive only ground instruction in “stall awareness, spin entry, spins, and spin recovery techniques.” A candidate for flight instructor must demonstrate ground “instructional proficiency” in the same areas, and receive actual spin flight instruction. The flight instructor requirements can be satisfied with a logbook endorsement from a CFI after just one flight. The result is often an instructor who speaks from dubious theoretical and personal experience. Unfortunately, he’ll be speaking to his students about flying’s most complex dynamic event—an event that can quickly deteriorate to the point where training limited to ground instruction, however informed, might not prove much help. Pilots learn spins through their hands, feet, and eyes. Not only do they have to learn the correct recovery response, they have to experience and filter out the impulsive and incorrect. That’s not an academic task.

Over the years, some authorities have argued that increased stall avoidance training is preferable to spin training. They cite as evidence the resulting spin-training accidents, and also cite statistics showing that, outside of training, most fatal stall/spin accidents happen during takeoffs and landings (or during buzz jobs), at altitudes too low for recovery. This approach ignores the fact that only spin accidents get recorded, while there’s no way of knowing how many people spin training has actually saved at recoverable altitudes, or prevented from making mistakes at low altitudes by virtue of their better understanding of how things can go wrong. It’s also a self-fulfilling prophecy: If you avoid spin training because you think recoveries from semi-developed spins are statistically unlikely below standard traffic pattern altitude, as the Air Safety Foundation has asserted, you probably won’t have the skill to recover from an initial spin departure, either. Yet, with training, recovery from the initial wing drop that signals the beginning of autorotation is possible in many light aircraft, at least above 500 feet, give or take.

So the question for the individual pilot becomes: Do you surrender your precious self to the stats—or do you try to beat them through training? Obviously, I vote for the latter. But I don’t think that spin training should again be made mandatory. On the whole, the instructor corps no longer has the qualifications. The regulations saw to that.

It’s true that the FAA has applied the concept of stall/spin avoidance in a consistent manner to aircraft certification. Stick shakers and pushers on turboprops and jets make it difficult to get into the stall territory necessary for a spin; and more evolved wing, empennage, and aileron designs make inadvertent spins less likely than in the old J-3 Cubs, Cessna 120/140s, and Champs in which civilian spin instruction was once given. Although their stall behaviors were often gentle, they had significant adverse aileron yaw, powerful elevators, and sometimes low directional stability—a combination that affords plenty of pro-spin opportunity if a pilot misapplies the controls. The ease with which these and many other pre- and World-War-Two-era aircraft could spin if mishandled made spin training necessary. Later generations of aircraft were harder to provoke. Making them that way was part of the reasoning behind the removal of the private pilot spin requirement. As long as spins were required, manufacturers had to produce trainers that were easy to spin. Without the requirement, more spin-resistant designs became marketable. But pilots sometimes waste that resistance through poor technique.

A good spin-training program concentrates first on post-stall departures and incipient spin entries, where aerodynamic moments predominate and emergency recoveries should occur. When you’re comfortable, the training moves to spins in which the aerodynamic and inertial moments approach a balance, and correct control movements become more critical in order to upset the balance and recover. You’ll find that the stick forces necessary for recovery tend to increase as a spin develops, and spin rate can temporarily increase after recovery inputs are applied. These are essential points to demonstrate, because their misinterpretation can cause a pilot to panic and misuse controls.

It’s important to realize that practice spins at safe altitudes, while necessary for learning spin dynamics and recoveries, don’t adequately recreate the mental state in which spin accidents most likely occur. Spins particularly happen down low, when anxious pilots attempt to increase a turn rate while fighting a growing sink rate. Prime examples are turn-backs due to engine failure on takeoff, and skidding or high-g turns when low and tight on base to final. Those who claim they’d never mishandle an aircraft in this way simply don’t realize how powerful the impulse sometimes becomes, especially when a pilot tries to make up for poor initial technique and the ground starts rising. In fact, spins aren’t just fatal at low altitude: low altitude is often their chief provocation. Pilots respond to the ground threat with visceral but aerodynamically inappropriate commands. Dire as it sounds, spin training is also crash training! If such are the cards you’re dealt, it’s much better to crash under control in an attitude that allows energy to dissipate, than in a sudden-stop, nose-in-the-dirt attitude of a spin departure.

Also remember that the differences between aerobatic and non-aerobatic aircraft can be substantial. The FAR Part 23 one-turn spin recovery requirement for normal category certification can produce a much less predictable aircraft than one certified under the six-turn requirement for aerobatics and spin-approved utility. Part 23 twins and large aircraft certified under Part 25 have no spin recovery requirements at all. Consequently, it’s dangerous to make excessively far-reaching assumptions about spin behavior based on experience in aerobatic trainers alone. A proper ground school takes this into account.

But the good news is that spin departures are essentially alike. Aircraft have different vulnerabilities, but they go into spins or post-stall gyrations for the same underlying reason: failure of lateral/directional stability at stalling angle of attack. As a result, learning to depart into and recover from spins in any one aircraft gives you the basic lessons needed to keep away from them in most others. By opening your eyes to both spin causes and consequences, spin training can build more ingrained and technically proficient stall avoidance. That’s of course the foundation on which the argument for spin training ultimately rests: Spin training should make emergency spin recoveries unnecessary. The training doesn’t have to be hair-raising and the airmanship benefits, once you’ve experienced them, are too genuine to ignore—a big chunk of mystery and vulnerability will be gone.

Did I sell you on spin training? I’m not giving up! Here’s a pdf file on Spins.