Pilots Must Be Prepared for ‘Unacceptable Stall Behavior’

It is a truth universally acknowledged that when an airplane stalls, the pilot must push its nose down. And yet it sometimes happens that even quite experienced pilots do the opposite. That was the case in February 2024, when two airline transport pilots, who had a combined total of more than 23,000 hours in their logbooks, conducted a post-maintenance stall check on a Hawker Beechcraft 900XP.  

The stall check is required after the leading edges of the wings have been removed for a routine, every-four-years inspection. The purpose is to confirm that some subtle, perhaps invisible distortion of leading-edge contour or change in the position of a stall strip has not changed the stalling behavior of the airplane.