A few months ago, I saw a link on twitter to the following video:

I recently remembered this and thought I might post it here and offer some analysis of the overall situation.  The biggest talking point I’ve come up with is “Attitude is everything.”  I mean that in two ways: attitude of the pilot and attitude of the plane.  After seeing the video, I went straight to the comments.  I know this is Youtube and that normally the comments are filled with racism, conspiracy theories and useless, incorrect information, but I was surprised at the discussion taking place in the comments.  More importantly I was shocked that the poster, who is presumed to be the pilot, seems to completely miss the learning opportunity presented here.  Instead he is convinced that something happened to the plane that was beyond his control and then proceeds to focus on the airspeed indicator.  Unfortunately, all appearances from the video are that he came in high and hot and executed a “wheel-barrow” landing and a bounce which caused the nose gear to collapse.  This was all exacerbated by the distraction of the CFI gesturing and teaching in what should have been a sterile period.  Not to mention, had the CFI had his hands near the controls he might have saved the landing/plane, but that is a topic for another day.

The aircraft never stalled best I can tell  The fixation on the airspeed indicator is probably a side effect of the pilot’s tenuous grasp of what causes stalls, exceeding the critical angle of attack.  This is where the attitude of the aircraft comes into play. To offer an example of why speed plays a very small role in stalls I must delve into one of the most deceptively complex topics in all of aviation, angle of attack.  I confess, I had very little understanding of the concept for quite some time during my training.  Like the pilot above, I just couldn’t get over the airspeed.  Then one day I thought about the following video:

If you’ll notice, the jet in the video is flying at a high rate of speed when the pilot jerks it into a nose high attitude. Rather than immediately climbing continues to descend and impacts the ground.  What we are witnessing is a rapid shift in angle of attack from low to well past critical.  Thus rather than climbing, the aircraft continues its path into the ground.

So, what exactly is angle of attack? Most simply it is the angle between the general motion of the aircraft (“relative wind”) and the center (or chord) line of the airfoil (e.g. wing, rotor blade).  The thing I failed to grasp early on was that speed didn’t matter as much as direction mattered.  In other words, a plane travelling at 300 knots can still easily enter a stall.  I realize all this probably isn’t very helpful, but one day it will click.  If I had to offer a maneuver to help someone understand angle of attack, I’d say follow the advice of Langewiesche in Stick and Rudder and practice slow flight.