Slow flight and the flight characteristics demonstration

The candidate teaches maneuvering during slow flight and the demonstration of flight characteristics at various configurations and airspeeds, from the right seat. At the end they can put a Student at the slow end of the envelope, keep them there safely, and use what the airplane is doing to teach rather than just to demonstrate.

This lesson is the foundation of the stall series and it is not a stall lesson. Nothing here is taken to a stall except by accident, and an accidental stall in this lesson is a finding rather than a bonus.

Worth saying to the candidate, because it changes how they teach it.

Slow flight is where a Student first feels that the controls are not switches. Everything is sloppier, the nose wants to go somewhere, the airplane answers late, and coordination stops being optional. A Student who has spent real time here arrives at stalls unafraid and arrives at landings with hands that already know what mushy feels like.

A candidate who teaches slow flight as a box to tick produces Students who are frightened of the slow end of the envelope, and those Students carry it into every landing they ever make.

Element 10 is where lesson 14's angle of attack material becomes real. Slow flight is the only regime in the private syllabus where a Student can feel the margin shrinking, hear the stall warning come and go with small pitch changes, and connect all of it to one idea. If the airplane has an angle of attack indicator, fly the whole exercise with the Student watching it. If it does not, teach the same idea from control feel and the stall warning, and say plainly that the indicator would show continuously what they are currently inferring.

The candidate should be able to say, in the brief, why a Student who has spent an hour here is less likely to be surprised later: the margin stops being a number on a placard and becomes something they have watched move.

Element 9 is the teaching content. A Student in slow flight for the first time is at a high workload and a mildly elevated stress level, and their capacity to take in new information drops sharply. A candidate who delivers a paragraph while the Student is fighting the airplane has wasted the paragraph. Short sentences, one idea, then let them fly.

Per US-5.6, this lesson carries one, and program/PROGRAM-STRUCTURE.md names it as one of the four phase 3 lessons that do.

The scenario: a power loss while established in slow flight. The Simulated Student is slow, at high power, nose high, and the throttle comes back. Their instinct will be to hold altitude with the elevator, which at that airspeed is exactly wrong and takes about two seconds to become a stall.

The candidate teaches, in advance and then in the moment, that the nose comes down first and the altitude is spent, and they have to say it fast enough to matter. This is the same idea they will teach on the base-to-final scenario, at a different point in the flight, which is worth naming out loud.

Brief the scenario as a scenario before the flight. The candidate must know a simulated emergency is coming today, per the safety practice this program teaches at lesson 38. What they do not know is when.

Ground 48 minutes, flight 90 minutes. Reconciles with the declared 0.8 ground and 1.5 dual.

Instructor: FAA-S-ACS-25 at Areas IV and X. FAA-H-8083-3C. The airplane.

Candidate: headset, the flight manual for the airplane being flown, their written preflight ground lesson, the stall speeds and flap limiting speeds for that airplane looked up in its own approved material.

Airplane: normal category, dual controls, with a functioning stall warning system. A lesson with an inoperative stall warning is not this lesson, because element 7 depends on it.

Cockpit recording: optional. Not one of the four P7 lessons.

1. Check the stall warning works on the ground. Element 7 and the demonstration both depend on it, and finding it inoperative at altitude wastes the flight.
2. Take the brief as a Student who has never been slow. Ask what "mushy" means, and make them answer without using the word.
3. Grade the brief before the airplane.
4. Brief the emergency scenario as coming today, not as a surprise. Then choose your moment.
5. In part 2, watch the altitude and heading through the demonstration. Slow flight narration is the easiest place in the phase to trade flying for talking, and it is lesson 26 reappearing.
6. In part 3, be uncomfortable to fly with. See the script. A Student at the slow end does small things wrong constantly, and the candidate has to triage rather than correct everything.
7. Do not let a stall happen in this lesson, and if one does, use it. It is a genuine finding about the candidate's monitoring and it belongs in the debrief rather than being waved off.
8. Part 4, candidate first.

Simulated Student script notes

Not in the study guide.

1. Teach the preflight ground lesson on slow flight and the flight characteristics demonstration.
2. Demonstrate establishing and maneuvering in slow flight from the right seat, narrating throughout.
3. Demonstrate the flight characteristics at various configurations and airspeeds, teaching what changes and why.
4. Talk the Simulated Student through slow flight, including turns, climbs, descents, and configuration changes.
5. Teach the response to a power loss from slow flight, and intervene if it is not applied.
6. Take the airplane at the threshold, out loud, three-way.
7. Critique, self-critique, then listen.

Identical wording in the study guide.

1. The candidate delivers the preflight ground lesson on slow flight and the flight characteristics demonstration, covering all seven items of the brief, and explains why slow flight is taught in terms of what the Student gains rather than what the ACS requires.
2. The candidate establishes and maneuvers in slow flight to the tolerances the current AI.X.A task specifies, from the right seat, while narrating continuously, including turns, climbs, descents, and at least one configuration change.
3. The candidate conducts the flight characteristics demonstration, naming what changes with configuration and airspeed as it changes, rather than describing it afterward.
4. The candidate distinguishes the stall warning from the stall in the taught content and in flight, and does not allow the demonstration to reach a stall.
5. The candidate talks the Simulated Student through slow flight using single-idea corrections, and does not deliver a correction longer than two sentences while the Student is at high workload.
6. The candidate teaches the response to a power loss from slow flight before it happens, and directs the nose down within two seconds when it does.
7. The candidate takes the flight controls using the three-way exchange, out loud, in both directions, including at least once when the airplane was not offered.
8. The candidate delivers a critique naming the error, its probable cause, and the correction for at least two of the errors flown.
9. The candidate delivers a self-critique before hearing the instructor's.

Standard 5 is the one that is new. Everything before this lesson allowed the candidate to explain at length. Here, length is the error.

Falling short does not block lesson 31. No proficiency gate (Decision 9). It triggers policy/REMEDIATION-VISIBILITY.md.

Verbatim in the study guide.

The instructor takes the airplane when:

• The stall warning is continuous for more than three seconds without correction applied.
• Airspeed decays below the slow flight target and continues decreasing for two seconds.
• Bank exceeds 30 degrees at any point during slow flight.
• Yaw is uncorrected at high power and low airspeed for more than three seconds.
• Altitude passes 1,500 ft AGL descending.
• The nose is not lowered within two seconds of the simulated power loss.
• Either pilot is unclear about who is flying the airplane.

Hard floor: all air work is terminated by 1,500 ft AGL. North Aero policy, not regulation (US-3.4).

The bank limit is tighter here than anywhere else in the phase, at 30 degrees, because bank at the slow end of the envelope raises the stall speed at exactly the point where there is no margin to give away.

Positive exchange of controls, both directions, every time.

Verbatim in the study guide.

Read:

• FAA-S-ACS-25, tasks AI.X.A and AI.X.B, in full. Write down the tolerances and the airspeed the slow flight task specifies.
• FAA-H-8083-3C, the chapter covering slow flight and the approach to a stall.
• FAA-H-8083-9B chapter 2, on workload and how much a learner can absorb under stress.
• Your lesson 14 notes on angle of attack indicators, and whether today's airplane has one.
• standards/MANEUVER-LESSON-SHAPE.md, addition 2.

Deliverable: Two things. First, write the preflight ground lesson you will teach on slow flight and the flight characteristics demonstration. This is one of your seventeen P3 plans, covering slow flight. Second, look up the stall speeds in every configuration and the flap limiting speeds for the airplane you will fly, in that airplane's own approved material, and bring them written down.

VS-30-1

Type: Exemplar | ACS task: AI.X.A | Status: empty What it should show: slow flight established and maneuvered with altitude, heading, and airspeed held, narrated in short single-idea corrections Reference Critique: not applicable for an Exemplar

VS-30-2

Type: Error | ACS task: AI.X.A | Status: empty What it should show: airspeed chased with the throttle, oscillating, with yaw uncorrected as power comes up Reference Critique: to be written from the Instructor Debrief of the flight the Clip is taken from

VS-30-3

Type: Error | ACS task: AI.X.B | Status: empty What it should show: a configuration change in slow flight producing a balloon, with the trim state as the cause Reference Critique: to be written from the Instructor Debrief of the flight the Clip is taken from

Tagged by ACS task. These serve every lesson touching AI.X.A and AI.X.B.

This lesson is complete and deliverable whether or not its Video Slots are filled.

Time the corrections, in sentences. Standard 5 is measurable and it is worth measuring, because candidates consistently believe they are being concise while delivering four-sentence corrections to somebody who is at capacity. Count them, and say the number.

Watch for the rigid Student going unnoticed. A candidate who keeps instructing a Student who has stopped absorbing is the single most common failure in primary instruction, and this lesson is the first place in the program where it can be staged deliberately. If they miss it, do not rescue them. Let it run a few seconds longer, then take it up in the debrief.

This lesson feeds lessons 32 and 33 directly. A candidate who is comfortable at the slow end here will find the stall series manageable; one who is not will find it hard. Say which you saw.

Tracker Status set by the instructor, named, dated.

• ✓Traces to a story. US-5.2, US-5.4, US-5.6, US-6.3
• ✓Carries ACS tasks and Part 61 references
• ✓Completion standards are observable behavior, naming flying tolerance and teaching quality
• ✓Common errors listed, each with the instructor's response
• ✓Intervention threshold stated explicitly, with a hard floor and a tightened bank limit
• ✓Student preparation named, in the student half
• ✓FAA references verified current, 2026-08-13
• ✓Passes the design system check
• ✓Appears in the program structure and coverage matrix, hours reconciling
• ✓Both halves exist
• ✓Video Slots named and ACS-tagged, and the lesson states it is deliverable with them empty
• ✓Vocabulary matches CONTEXT.md
• ✓No em dashes, no POH performance numbers, no pricing
• ✓Falling short does not block progression (Decision 9)
• ✓Runs the four-part cycle from standards/MANEUVER-LESSON-SHAPE.md
• ✓Carries an emergency scenario, per US-5.6 and the program structure
• ✓Carries no spin content beyond the connection to lesson 31 (US-6.3)