Unusual Attitude Recovery

Imagine yourself in the left seat of the cockpit of a small airplane.   You are flying a few miles from the coast, over the ocean, with an instructor in the right seat beside you.

He tells you to put on your Foggles, a pair of plastic glasses designed so that all you can see is the instruments in front of you.   The area outside the cockpit is “fogged out” (hence the trade name), as if you were flying through the clouds.    You are staring at your instruments, keeping you and the airplane happily right side up by referring to the indicators in front of you.   After flying “straight and level” for a while, the instructor gives the following instruction:  “Now close your eyes and continue to fly straight and level until I tell you to open them.”

This shouldn’t be difficult, you think, because you were taught to fly “by the seat of your pants,” to feel the airplane underneath you and use your vestibular senses to know what attitude your airplane is in at any particular moment in time.   It seems and feels easy.

You are now flying blindly, paying sharp attention to your butt, the position of the stick in your hand (sorry), and using all your sensations to feel what the airplane is doing.   It is quiet and calm in the cockpit, and you are feeling good about how well you can fly blindly.   Now the instructor says:  “When I tell you to open your eyes, look only at the instruments and recover back to straight and level as quickly as you can.”  A few short moments later, he continues, “Now, open your eyes…”

As you open your eyes and see the instruments in front of you, your eyes burst open to their widest position, and your heart just about jumps out of your chest as you see that the airplane and both of its occupants are in a steep, turning dive, about to enter a deadly spiral.  You can’t see the ocean below, but you know it is there.  As a tiny bead of sweat appears out of nowhere on your cheek, you quickly analyze the situation, reduce power, level the wings, center the rudder, and gently pull the nose up.  The airplane is heavy, primarily when pulling the stick back, but it complies with your commands and all returns to normal except your breath, which takes a bit longer to recover.

You have now recovered from what pilots call an unusual attitude.  And in that process, you have learned several important lessons.

The first one is just how easy it is to get into trouble, and how quickly things can go wrong.   But even more important is the fact that they can go wrong without even knowing it.  You were, truly, in a steep diving turn when your body was saying you were level on the level.  You may have a big American fast-food-fed butt, but that butt isn’t nearly as sensitive as your eyes.  And while your middle ear may be even more sensitive than Davy Crockett’s wild front ear, it will easily deceive you.   Things aren’t always as they seem, and life can be quite a hazardous business. Whether it is the loss of a loved one, a betrayal by a business partner, or a diagnosis of a terminal illness just when you are feeling at your healthiest, life has a way of bringing us to the brink of a death spiral without seeing it coming.

The second insight is also fairly obvious, but worth considering as well.   With proper training, mental rehearsal, a good aircraft, and enough skills, we can usually recover from the unusual attitudes in which we find ourselves.   These requisites are significant; without them we might not have what it takes to steady ourselves before we smack into the icy ocean below.

Proper training is a given.  Whether it is a course on how to handle marital conflicts that could save metaphorical hearts from breaking, or a course in relaxation and meditation that could save literal hearts from breaking, training is essential.  Mental rehearsal does work and it is necessary in order to master anything.

Having a good aircraft is also a given.   The bodies we fly in should be well maintained.   The FAA requires me to give my airplane an annual physical.  Not a bad idea for all of us.  I can assure you that being healthy itself doesn’t necessarily keep you out of trouble, but I can assure you as well that the healthier you are to begin with the more likely you will be to get out of it.

If you choose to leave the confines of your house or apartment and are old enough to drive, you are already in the left seat.   Inevitably, life will throw us curves, and we will find ourselves in an unusual attitude.    While there is wisdom in avoiding unusual and dangerous attitudes to begin with, survival depends on our ability to recover from them.

-Thank you, Michael Phillips, for sitting in the right seat and conducting this exercise with me.   It is a real confidence booster!

8 thoughts on “Unusual Attitude Recovery

  1. Thank you Ira, for the reminder to stay focused on the task at hand, be prepared for the inevitable course corrections, and stay diligent in your pursuit of your goals. All wise advice whether flying a Cessna, or navigating the daily commute

  2. George used to have to fly annually “under the hood” . . . . that accomplished the same thing: flying blind! I can’t wait to show him your essay. He is outside now raking up the billions of fallen oak leaves. We had quite a wind here while in LA with our large group of relatives. The wind was fierce down there too, especially in La Crescenta – wind capitol of LA. It’s quite a funnel for the powerful Santa Anas.