Landing Configuration Stall Prevention

Landing configuration means the landing gear extended and the flaps set at an approved setting for a normal landing (AC 120-109). The skill element requires you to establish that configuration — lift/drag devices set and landing gear extended — and maintain coordinated flight throughout the maneuver, in simulated or actual instrument conditions (AA.V.C.S3). If your operator authorizes more than one landing flap setting, know which one the evaluator specified and say it back.

• Clear the area; entry altitude must allow the recovery to be completed no lower than 3,000 feet AGL (non-transport category) or 5,000 feet AGL (transport category) (AA.V.C.S1)
• Bank 15°–30°, with pitch attitude and power adjusted smoothly per the evaluator's instructions to an impending stall, manually or with the autopilot engaged (AA.V.C.S4)
• Coordinated flight in simulated or actual instrument conditions throughout (AA.V.C.S3)
• Acknowledge the cue(s) and promptly recover at the first indication of an impending stall (AA.V.C.S5)

Note the entry altitude is identical across all three stall prevention Tasks — the landing configuration is not flown at a lower entry altitude just because it models a low-altitude event.

Stalls at a low altitude (AA.V.C.R7). The other two Tasks stop at inadvertent stall, spin, and loss of control; this one names the altitude problem directly, because the landing configuration is the one you are actually in when close to the ground. The practical content of that risk: there may be no altitude available to trade, which is precisely why the standard is prevention at the first indication rather than recovery from a developed stall. AC 120-109 directs training at low altitudes within 500 feet AGL as well as near maximum altitude (para 4-2).

No — this is the single most important reversal in modern stall training. AC 120-109: reducing AOA is the most important pilot action in recovering from an impending or full stall, and pilots must accept that doing so will normally result in altitude loss. Recovery profiles that emphasized zero or minimal altitude loss and immediate maximum thrust have been eliminated (para 2-5). The AFH makes the same point from the accident record: pilots who did not first reduce AOA and instead prioritized power and maintaining altitude lost control (AFH ch. 5). Low altitude raises the stakes of getting the wing flying again; it does not change the method.

Fly your POH/FM procedure (AA.V.C.S6), which should map onto the AC 120-109 template:

1. Autopilot and autothrottle/autothrust — disconnect
2. Nose-down pitch control until impending stall indications are eliminated; nose-down trim as needed
3. Bank — wings level
4. Thrust — as needed
5. Speed brakes/spoilers — retract
6. Return to the desired flightpath, gently

Configuration cleanup: retract flaps or other lift/drag devices to the recommended setting, and retract the landing gear after a positive rate of climb is established, before returning to the flight path the evaluator specifies (AA.V.C.S7).

Because the ACS requires it — retract the landing gear only after a positive rate of climb is established, if applicable (AA.V.C.S7) — and because sequence matters when you are trading altitude for AOA. Neither the ACS nor AC 120-109 explains the why; take the rest of this as instructor reasoning rather than standard: until the wing is flying and the vertical trend has reversed, the gear is your evidence of state, and an early retraction removes the option of touching down on wheels if the recovery is at low altitude. Flaps go to the recommended setting, not to zero: retracting flaps fully at low speed raises the stall speed at exactly the wrong moment. Command and confirm each change with the pilot monitoring.

Icing is the one environmental element unique to the landing configuration among the three stall prevention Tasks (AA.V.C.R6). Its effects:

• Earlier stall: contamination changes the wing's critical AOA so the stall arrives earlier than the airspeed suggests; the AFH warns that wing contamination limits the effectiveness of an AOA indicator (AFH ch. 5)
• Weaker cues: with ice, aerodynamic stall may occur with little or none of the usual advance cues — buffet, reduced control effectiveness, stall warning horn, shaker, or pusher — and stall speed increases as high as 50 knots have been observed in post-upset data review (AC 61-67, para 102)
• Recovery: a prompt pitch-down with aggressive power application gives the most rapid recovery with minimum altitude loss; note the AOA (or airspeed) at the upset and do not approach it again during the recovery, since it may be well below the normal stall AOA
• Equipment: AC 120-109 also lists the effects of malfunctioning or deferred equipment on stall protection and stick pusher systems (para 4-2) — a deferred heated probe or an inoperative ice protection component changes what your warnings are worth

Refer to the AFM for contaminated-wing approach speed additives; this guide will not assert them.

AA.V.C.K3 asks for the factors and the prevention. Realistic ones:

• An unstabilized approach — high, fast, and configuring late, then decelerating below target with idle thrust and spool-up time working against you
• A slam-dunk or short-notice runway change compressing the descent and the configuration schedule
• Windshear or a microburst on short final (AA.V.C.R6)
• An overshooting base-to-final turn corrected with rudder — the classic cross-control, which the ACS lists under R5
• A late go-around with the airplane already slow, trimmed nose-up, and about to receive a large pitch couple with thrust
• Distraction and task prioritization failures during a busy, low-altitude segment (AA.V.C.R9)

Prevention is a go-around, taken early. The prevention decision is the checkride answer.

AA.V.C.R8 (and AA.V.A.R7 / AA.V.B.R7 in the sibling Tasks) names collision hazards, including aircraft and terrain. It shows up in three places:

• Before the entry — the skill element opens with clear the area and an entry altitude that lets the recovery finish no lower than 3,000 ft AGL (non-transport) or 5,000 ft AGL (transport) (AA.V.C.S1). The altitude floor is the terrain mitigation for the maneuver.
• During the recovery — AC 120-109 is unambiguous about the conflict you are most likely to meet down low: if a TAWS warning is encountered during recovery from a low-altitude stall event, recovery from the stall warning takes precedence; you fly the TAWS escape maneuver only once the airplane has recovered from the stall event (para 3-2a). You cannot pull to a terrain escape with the wing still stalled.
• After the recovery — situational awareness while returning to the desired flightpath — heading, terrain, altitude, other aircraft, and flight deck automation — is among the emphasis areas in the AC's sample lesson plans (Appendices 3–4). This is where the pilot monitoring's traffic and terrain scan, and the deviation call to ATC, belong.

The ACS lists secondary stalls, accelerated stalls, elevator trim stalls, and cross-control stalls among the risks for all three stall prevention Tasks (AA.V.C.R5), but the elevator trim case belongs to the landing configuration by scenario: the airplane is trimmed for a low approach speed, then thrust is applied for a go-around, and the nose-up trim plus the thrust couple produce a pitch-up the pilot must physically overpower. AC 120-109 anticipates the same physics from the other direction — an abrupt pitch-up or trim change at an unexpected autopilot disconnect, aggravated in some airplanes by an additional pitch-up when the pilot increases thrust (para 4-2). The answer in both cases is forward column plus nose-down trim as needed — template step 2.

Measure yourself against the AC 120-109 checking criteria (para 4-5): prompt recognition of the impending stall, correct application of the stall recovery procedure, and recovering without exceeding the airplane's limitations. Concretely, that means failing to acknowledge the cue and recover at the first indication (AA.V.C.S5); letting it progress to a full stall or a stick pusher activation; losing coordinated flight (AA.V.C.S3); exceeding an airplane limitation to get out of it; or mishandling the cleanup sequence.

Two things commonly assumed to be bust items are not:

• Altitude loss: not a failure item by itself — criteria "should not focus on altitude loss" (para 4-5), and there is no predetermined value
• Secondary stall warning: not automatically a failure item either — AC 120-109 notes it can be difficult in some airplanes to judge where pitch can begin to be increased, and a secondary warning is acceptable as long as AOA is promptly reduced and the airplane's limitations are not exceeded (para 4-2a). What fails you is not reducing AOA promptly, or exceeding a limitation — not the second chirp.

Anchor it to your operator's manual, not to a number you memorized elsewhere — stabilized approach gates are operator- and type-specific, published in the FOM or GOM, and the ACS points you to the FSB Report (type specific) and POH/AFM. State these without needing a reference:

• The gate is a decision point
• The required outcome when the criteria are not met is a go-around
• An early go-around is the answer the evaluator is looking for — the ACS frames K3 as the actions that can be taken to prevent the stall, and a go-around taken before the margin is gone is that action

Treat the relative grading weight of a go-around as instructor judgment, not published criteria; the only published checking criteria are the three in AC 120-109 para 4-5. Frame the prevention as an energy-management call: configuration, thrust, and flight path committed early enough that the airplane is never asked to fly slower than it can.

It costs you the classic overshooting-turn skid at high AOA — corrected with bottom rudder on the turn to final, more than you'd risk in cruise. The ACS risk for this Task is inadvertent stall, spin, and loss of control during landing (AA.V.C.R1), and sideslip effects appear in the knowledge element (AA.V.C.K1). The AFH warns that even the instinct to pick up a dropping wing with aileron can make it worse — a downward-deflected aileron produces greater AOA and more induced drag on that wing and a more complete stall at the tip, why it's important to first reduce AOA before attempting to roll (AFH ch. 5). Template order — pitch, then bank — exists for this reason.

Enough to explain why prevention is the only real answer down low.

• Definition: a spin is an aggravated stall that results in autorotation — the rising wing is less stalled than the descending wing, and the airplane follows a downward corkscrew path (AC 61-67)
• Cause: exceeding the critical AOA while applying excessive or insufficient rudder (para 109)
• Direction: follows the feet — in a skidding turn (aileron and rudder in the same direction), rotation goes in the direction the controls are applied; in a slipping turn, the spin usually breaks opposite the aileron being held
• Recovery: the PARE order you learned in primary training — power to idle, ailerons neutral, full opposite rudder, then briskly move the elevator forward to about neutral; neutralize the rudder when rotation stops and gradually recover from the dive. Abrupt aft elevator or rudder/aileron inputs during the recovery can produce a secondary stall and another spin (AC 61-67, para 111)
• Altitude: roughly 500 feet of altitude loss per 3-second turn in most small aircraft in which spins are authorized, more at high density altitude

A base-to-final spin has no recovery altitude — which is why the graded skill is coordination throughout (AA.V.C.S3), not spin recovery.

• Synthetic cues come first and are what you act on: stick shaker, aural warning, annunciator. A shaker normally activates around 107 percent of the actual stall speed (AFH ch. 16) — roughly a 7 percent margin, a handful of knots at approach speeds.
• Aerodynamic buffet may be a poor cue — airplanes without vortex generators may stall with little to no buffet (AFH ch. 16); buffet severe enough to be a strong and effective deterrent to further AOA increase is a full stall indication, not an impending one (AC 120-109 definition).
• Feel: control pressures lighten and larger control movements are needed for the same response, with increased reaction time (AFH ch. 5).
• Descent rate: in a power-off, 1G stall the predominant cues may be full-up elevator against the stops and a high descent rate (AFH ch. 5) — a cue that is nearly invisible from inside a stabilized-looking approach attitude.

The procedure does not change; the margins do. AC 120-109 directs that training include stall events at low altitudes within 500 feet AGL (para 4-2), because the crew has to execute the identical sequence with a fraction of the altitude. Practically:

• The pilot monitoring's most valuable call is the prevention call — deviation from the approach criteria, sink rate, or speed trend — before any warning fires
• Once the cue fires, the pilot flying announces and flies the recovery; the pilot monitoring confirms the autoflight disconnects, calls radio altitude and vertical trend, and handles the go-around, ATC, and any emergency declaration
• Configuration changes stay commanded and confirmed — flaps to the recommended setting, gear up after a positive rate (AA.V.C.S7)

AC 120-109 defines CRM as the effective use of all available resources: human resources, hardware, and information (para 1-7b) — at 500 feet, the pilot monitoring's voice is the resource that matters.

You can't — AC 120-109 says so directly: do not delay recovery due to degrading airspeed or a stall event to obtain ATC clearance to a lower altitude; declare an emergency if necessary (para 4-2). On a low approach the practical version is that you may deviate from the assigned altitude, the missed approach path, or the speed assignment to fly the recovery, and you coordinate afterward. Priority order: only after recovering to a safe maneuvering speed and AOA do you re-establish the assigned heading, altitude, and airspeed.

Under 121.423, stall prevention lives inside extended envelope training:

• Simulator: conducted in a Level C or higher full flight simulator approved under 121.407, with instructor-guided hands-on experience of recovery from full stall and stick pusher activation, if equipped (121.423(a), (c))
• Maneuvers: the neighborhood this Task lives in also includes manually controlled slow flight, manually controlled loss of reliable airspeed, manually controlled instrument departure and arrival, upset recovery maneuvers, and recovery from bounced landing (121.423(b))
• Recurrency: 24 calendar months for items (b)(1) through (4) and (c); 36 calendar months for the bounced landing item (121.423(d))
• Deviations: from the Level C simulator requirement may be approved for periods not to exceed 12 months (121.423(e)(4))