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Comment by graderjs | Hacker News Reader

“The aircraft behaved very well, and the recovery was surprisingly easy,” Xei wrote.

Sounds like the pilot is talking about the simplest thing in the world. Video makes the pilot seem incredibly calm in the face of the plane moving in a crazy way.

Edit: what would make the plane move that way?--it seems to recover after initial spin only to drop nose down, then start strafing (correct term?) left and right like it's in a half pipe before starting to spin again. It looks almost totally of control, to me it looks like it hit a wall of air. I have no idea. I'm amazed the pilot was so cool. Very impressive

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When something goes wrong, fly the plane. You have to be calm or you will die. This is covered in training.

Response to your edit: It's yawing because of asymmetric thrust.

Yup

Aviate, Navigate, Communicate.

In that order

Get the airframe under controlled flight, then avoid obstacles and fly towards safe landing, then tell control & other aviators about the situation so they can help (or at least not worsen it).

In that order, to save your life.

Because this scenario is something you learn when getting a license.

Regular stalls, sure. But I'm not sure that stalls that go into a spin are part of it.

Spinning into cloud in a twin - absolute nightmare.

Spins are not required (USA, PPL), but you should find a CFI and a spin ready plane and have some fun.

The older CFI's usually seem to be up for it. :D

It's a mandatory training requirement before your first solo.

Spin avoidance, sure, but most places these days don't have actual spins on the syllabus as more were being lost in training practice than subsequent general flying.

Perhaps because the training wasn't being well done. It's a pity, because to most pilots a spin will be very disorienting unless you are used to it.

When I learned in the US, stall and spin avoidance and recovery was taught, but only stalls were actually practiced (because apparently too many accidents happened practicing spins). Not sure how the situation is in South Africa.

https://www.faa.gov/documentLibrary/media/Advisory_Circular/...

My dad did his PPL in South Africa, and I know he practiced spins. Not sure if they were tested though.

Spins recover practice is required for CFI (certified flight instructor), but not for PPL (private pilot license).

Many commercial pilots (like skydiving pilots) have CFI (because while training, you need to meet a certain number of flight hours, and you might as well spend them on CFI).

My information is very old, but my understanding is that in Canada, spin recovery is also required for private pilot's license. My father definitely had to put the plane into a spin and recover it in order to get his (now long expired) license.

knowledge -- yes, practice -- no (for PPL).

When I learned to fly gliders we practised spins and spin recovery. First time I did it, I botched the recovery and was mildly terrified. Went up a week later with a extremely experienced instructor and spent a whole hour thermalling up to altitude, stalling, then using the rudder to kick it into a spin, cancel the rotation, kick it into an opposite spin and back, stalled the whole time. Lose 3000 feet, recover, thermal back up, do it all over again. Very interesting to feel the complete ineffectiveness of the ailerons vs very effective rudder. By the end of it, I was pretty confident I would recognize the symptoms early and had the muscle memory to react quickly and correctly if I ever needed to. Best flying lesson I ever had.

Of course all that is with no engines. Assymetric thrust in a twin is more complicated, and I expect you've got less margin before you damage the airframe.

That gives the goose bumps. That's something else than debugging that web app :-)

I haven’t done the training but friends have. My understanding is spin recovery is pretty standard. You enter the spin by a pretty intentional stall procedure.

From what I’ve heard it’s actually pretty frightening the first few times, but that’s the point - do it enough to recognize what’s happening and make the response automatic.

When I had US training in the 90s, stall and spin recovery were taught, but only stall was supposed to be practiced.

I was told that spin was not because it could damage some of the instruments which have gyros.

We did it anyway (in a Cessna 152), and it only took about 1.5 turns to recover. Great fun. Easiest way to induce a spin was flaps down during stall.

Might depend on where you get your training from but I know for my private pilot's license I was instructed and practiced how to purposely get into spins and recover from them. It's a requirement in Canada: https://tc.canada.ca/en/aviation/publications/stall-spin-awa...

There is a website that has final audio recordings from actual incidents

Pilots remain calm

Only like confused new pilots in groups panic. For the rest, you can basically retrain your ear to tell when a pilot is more-so disillusioned by their self-preservation efforts.

My first impression was that the motion prior to levelling out seemed related to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_roll

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