Why Full Power Can Flip a Go-Around

Claire Brooks

Three hundred feet above the runway, full flaps down, heavy nose up trim dialled in, and suddenly, you have to abort the landing. You slam the throttle all the way forward to full power, and, and, and instantly, the nose doesn't just rise, it, it rocket launches toward the sky.

Oliver Hart

Forty nine pounds, isn't it? Up to forty pounds of pure, uncontrollable pitch up force pushing back against your arm in a matter of seconds.

Claire Brooks

Exactly. That is the elevator trim stall. A student pilot, let's call him Jimmy, is coming in for a routine landing approach. He gets configured, heavy nose up trim so he doesn't have to fight the controls on short final, and then, boom, call for a go around.

Oliver Hart

And when he jams that throttle forward, what is physically happening over the tail of the airplane?

Claire Brooks

It is all about propwash. When you apply maximum throttle, you get this massive high velocity blast of air straight from the propeller, rushing right over the elevator. And because that trim tab is already deflected to pull the nose up, that extra airflow multiplies the aerodynamic force instantly. I mean, it, it, it literally catapults the nose skyward.

Oliver Hart

Plus you have engine torque and P factor kicking in at the exact same moment, pulling you hard to the left, right?

Claire Brooks

Hard to the left! So you are fighting forty pounds of stick force pushing up, while the aircraft is violently yawing left. And, and here is where Jimmy panics. His brain sees the nose pointing straight up, feels the sudden surge of power, and he actually pulls back on the yoke even more because he thinks climbing fast equals safety.

Oliver Hart

While the stall warning horn is screaming in his ears!

Claire Brooks

Right in his ears! Captain Bob, a veteran instructor with fifteen thousand hours in airline cockpits, sees this all the time with low time pilots. They freeze, or worse, they physically fight to hold that nose high attitude, completely misinterpreting the pitch violently increasing as positive climb performance, when in reality, they are micro seconds away from an aerodynamic stall three hundred feet off the ground.

Oliver Hart

That is terrifying. At three hundred feet AGL, an unmanaged trim stall gives you zero room to recover if that wing snaps over.

Oliver Hart

So when every single survival instinct in your body is screaming at you to pull back and avoid the ground, what does the official FAA recovery procedure actually demand?

Claire Brooks

You have to push forward. Firm, positive, almost uncomfortable forward pressure on that control stick or yoke. You must force the nose down to keep the angle of attack below critical before you even think about touches on the trim wheel or the flap handle.

Oliver Hart

Right, because if you don't reduce that angle of attack first, no amount of trimming is going to save you from stalling out.

Claire Brooks

Exactly, but students make two classic, deadly mistakes during this exact window. The first one is pure panic, they feel the force, get scared of the speed, and chop the throttle back to idle. At three hundred feet, loaded up with full flaps, snatching away all your engine power instantly triggers a low altitude power off stall.

Oliver Hart

You just drop like a stone. And what is the second mistake?

Claire Brooks

Dumping all the flaps at once. The student reaches over, grabs the flap lever, and retracts them from full to zero in one single motion. You instantly shed a massive chunk of your lift, and the airplane sinks straight into the terrain before the engine can accelerate you out of it.

Oliver Hart

It is wild how human instinct in a cockpit can be so completely wrong. Captain Bob has a specific rule for managing this, doesn't he?

Claire Brooks

He calls it the muscle first, mechanics second rule. You use heavy forward arm pressure to physically hold the climb attitude, override the aerodynamic force, then you start smooth retrimming while incrementally retracting flaps, notch by notch.

Oliver Hart

I am picturing Jimmy in the cockpit trying to use both hands to spin the trim wheel because his arm is tiring out, and taking his hands completely off the yoke!

Claire Brooks

Oh, Bob almost had a heart attack! Jimmy literally let go of the flight controls to spin the wheel with two hands! The nose instantly pitched up toward forty five degrees. Bob had to grab the yoke, slam it forward, and remind him that physical trim discipline and flying the attitude first is what separates surviving a go around from becoming a statistic.

Oliver Hart

Push forward, hold the attitude with your arm, trim out the pressure, retract flaps in stages. Simple on paper, life saving in the air.

Claire Brooks

Every single time.